Suggestions On An eBox/Ubuntu Network Setup For a Non-Profit

[GeorgeAppiah]

Hello eBox Community Members,

I'm helping to setup a network for a local human-rights non-profit, and I'd appreciate your thoughts on our choices and also any help to setup the network. There are presently 25 users on the network, but this is expected to reach 40 by end of the year. All users have Laptops running Windows XP. [Just for your information, my background is in RF Planning & Optimization (cellular network stuff), so I'm not really into server stuff.]

Server Software
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The organization cannot afford a full-time sys admin, so I'm going to give one of their staff some basic training, and I'll be providing "guided troubleshooting" to them over the telephone / by email. So we're thinking of using Ubuntu Desktop (instead of the bundled Ubuntu Server) for their server, and then install eBox on top of the Ubuntu Desktop as a PDC / centralized login server. Any thoughts on this choice?

Local Email / Webmail
==============
The organization is currently using Google Apps for email, and Outlook is configured for all users. They also use Google's Webmail interface when they're out of the office, as most Internet cafes here do not allow users to connect their own computers.

But they would like to be able to exchange mails at the office, even when their Internet service is down. So we need some soft of relay on the local server to make this happen. Is this feature built into the new eBox 0.12? If not, any thoughts on what tool to use and how to go about is? Also, is there possibility of implementing an SSO (single sign on for Google Apps / eBox)... without buying Google Apps Pro?

Remote Access
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Field staff need to be able to access documents on this central. Unfortunately, they have a DHCP-supplied IP address, and their ISP is not ready to give them a static IP... unless they move to a "Business Plus" package costing US$300/month. This is not possible.

How can we work around this? I know of services like No-IP, DynDNS, etc... but I've no idea how secure and reliable they are for a human-rights non-profit to to use. If it helps at all, please note that for now it's just documents (docs, pdf, images, etc) they need to access remotely... not applications.

Thank you for the great software, and I'm looking forward for your help.

[nicolasdiogo]

for the dynamic dns you could use ddclient; install it by

sudo apt-get install ddclient

then open you account with www.dyndns.com and setup your dynamic domain;
myOrgName.dyndns.org

use their configuration tool, it is under:
support > dns tools > Update Client Configurator > choose ddclient
and add your dynamic domain

click on generate and paste the result into your file:
/etc/ddclient/ddclinet.conf
OR
/etc/ddclient.conf

check were this file is located.


as for installing ebox on an ubuntu desktop; note that network manager does not work well with ebox-network so you will have to uninstall network manager.

as for google mail; i do not have any idea maybe someone will help out here.

if you have users trying to connect to their shares while they are away you will need to setup VPNs. again i am not an expert on this but there is plenty of docs around,

i use my email on the move with ebox and works great.

good luck

Nicolas

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