Posts Tagged "consulting"

Maison des Tilleuls : Le Blanc-Mesnil, France

Posted on Oct 23, 2009 in Featured, Sample Work | 0 comments

Problem:
15 donated and poorly configured machines needed to be cleaned up and ready for local community volunteers who teach basic computer skills to members of the Paris suburb Le Blanc-Mesnil (map)

http://www.maisondestilleuls.org/

Configuration:
The mix of hardware included a Core II Duo, Pentium 4′s, Pentium III’s, and with an upper limit of 1gb of memory, and a lower limit of 256mb. The more powerful machine’s had Vista installation’s that were quite literally sucking the life force out of the air. (Booting in 5 minutes, taking over 3 minutes to launch Internet Explorer, and running Norton Anti-Virus). In my mind, and the hands of the user – completely unusable and not conducive to a learning/teaching environment. My first question to the director was : Can I completely take control of this situation and ideally configure each machine to a Linux based operating environment? Once I had gotten the key’s to the castle, here is what I did.

All had working CD-Rom drives and few had the ability to boot from a USB stick.

The Pentium III machines were configured and running happily with Fedora 5.

The operating system of choice was Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty, while this was the preference with an EXT4 filesystem and the most driver support to boot. There was a lot(10) of Dell Optiplex GX240′s which would not boot Ubuntu 9.04. Upon default installation, on intial reboot GRUB only returned BOOT with a flashing cursor. Ubuntu 8.04 had no problems installing and booting on these machines, but without the added benefit’s and speed of the EXT4 file system.

Solutions:

In this mix of hardware, not all the ethernet drops(wired to the walls) were working. One of the first tasks was to test each drop and label the plastic casing with an O for working/open and an X for not working/closed.

While one machine would install, I used the faster machines to burn extra install CD’s as one does not usually need nor carry much more than one. Other minor configuration tasks included setting up a Linksys Wireless router as a Public AP and a Wireless Laser Printer. Ubuntu 9.04 carried the drivers for the networked printer, while 8.04 needed the PPD file Brother so tastefully provided for Linux.

I setup the ideal environment for a basic user sitting down to a desktop for their first time. The menu bar was positioned on the bottom, 40px in height. A generic blue background color was determined. Editing the menu’s was an easy way to pare down the daunting set of options Ubuntu has enabled by default, and setup of Users/Groups involved invoking a root password, and configuring the “Administration” capabilities of the default user. To note here, once “Users and Groups” was configured and I had disabled most/all administration tasks for the default user, even unlocking this control panel via the root password was impossible once inside of X, and would require you to sudo -s in the terminal to make any real changes. At the end of the day, without a root password and serious knowledge of the terminal the user was presented with a desktop that looked as follows:

configured 9.04 desktop

Maison des Tilleuls
7 Square Maurice Audin – 93150 Le Blanc Mesnil
Tél : 01.45.91.97.00 – Fax : 01.45.91.97.09

www.maisondestilleuls.org

Du lundi au vendredi, de 8h à 12h30
et de 13h30 à 20h. Le samedi de 9h à 18h.

Moving forward:
Once all the Ethernet drops are operating I will assign static IP address’s to each of the machines. Installing SSH via

Will allow me to remotely login, upgrade, and maintain these systems at distance. Create a more user friendly desktop and continuing to pare down the user permissions to obtain an optimal balance of usability/functionality and security/performance. My intention is to create the most user friendly and appealing desktop environment for a user who sitting down to a computer for the first time, albeit an Ubuntu PC.