[TriLUG] Penguins in the desert

[Aaron Joyner]

Douglas Ward wrote:

>When someone travels to check their e-mail they bring the messages and
>attached files back on a floppy disk (or some other storage media). People
>who travel out there also bring things with them. Apparently internet cafes
>in Monrovia aren't the safest places to check e-mail. We have to work with
>the donated equipment that we have on hand. The budget is tight and we are
>trying to stretch it as much as possible. I'd love to go with military grade
>hardware or laptops but we can't afford it unfortunately.
>  
>
There have been lots of good suggestions in this thread, but don't 
neglect to consider sand, dust, and dirt, and their devastating effects 
on computer hardware.  Particularly in a true desert scenario, where you 
have people walking in and out from the sandy ground (if not sand storms 
actually blowing sand into where the computers are housed), this is 
going to result in a much higher maintenance schedule.  You'll want to 
train a couple, or at best maybe a half dozen people, on how to properly 
disassemble and clean a computer.  If they just know to blow the sand 
out from the inside of the case and how to lubricate and replace cooling 
fans, you'll be a *lot* better off in the long run.

You may also consider two other concerns geared towards keeping that 
hardware usable.  Make a CD for them that, when inserted into a system 
who's hardware is fundamentally functional, will wipe the drive and 
install "your" version of linux.  Make it such that this CD requires no 
human interaction and is as fool proof as possible.  This will hopefully 
help them overcome the problem of "computers in the closet that no one 
knows how to fix".  You may also want to consider explaining (or better 
yet scripting up) some rudimentary backup procedures, so that they're 
not too devastated by having to use the "reinstall" procedure just 
previously mentioned.  Something as simple as copying the contents of 
the home directory, or directories, or at least the critical UN 
reporting files, off to a floppy or appropriately-sized media.  Another 
idea could be setting up a redundant distributed home directory 
structure on the available machines, such that as long as X number of 
machines are still alive, and connected, the home directories will 
remain available (think network-raid, perhaps with DRBD or one of the 
network-filesystem versions such as I think coda is capable of this?).  
This may be a bit technically challenging, and hard to get going if you 
don't have much lead time.  The previously-mentioned simpler solution 
(copy to floppy) is probably the better solution.

I suppose it goes w/o saying that you should limit root access to these 
machines.  That's one of the nicest things about linux in an environment 
where you don't trust the users.  You can actually prevent them from 
breaking it.  :)

Best of luck in what sounds like a very fun, and very ambitious project!
Aaron S. Joyner