History for WorkStations
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**Maintaining Student and Teacher Workstations in Schools**
- Debian, the Linux distribution I find best for school situations; careful management of licences, values the *secure and stable* over the *cool and fancy* but leaves room for lots of creativity.
- Create rescue bootdisks with **mkboot kernelname**
- Libranet, a Vancouver-based Debian-based snazzy linux distribution http://www.libranet.com , specifically it has **adminmenu** for configuration
- Replicator, a debian-based free *ghost-like* replication program http://replicator.sourceforge.net which can also copy windows partitions
- Deep Freeze, a Vancouver-based company that produces a commercial program ideal for windows workstations when you want to minimize maintainance woes http://www.winselect.com/
**Replicator Procedure**
1. edit **/etc/replicator/replicator.conf** appropriately
2. create a monolithic kernel (avoid modules, compile NIC drivers right in)
then create a bootdisk
3. create **mini-root** and export it via **nfs**
4. run **rsync -daemon**
5. boot up **target computer** with **replicator bootdisk**, answer 4 questions
and watch do the replication/ghosting in 5-10 minutes
**X-terminal Mode**
- setup xdm on (several) strong servers
- modify files in /etc/X11/xdm to suit taste (I like icewm with minimalist theme)
- worry about security (by default debian prevents tcp access)
- make sure Xsession is what you want, or tell users about ~/.xsession