[ProgSoc] Challenge to ProgSoc members

[Roland Turner <raz@nospam.arrakis.com.au>]

OK, ITD's network setup is a joke, ITD's ability to get anything does is
comparable to that of an Australian politician and this is not going to
change until shortly befor hell freezes over.

So why not do something about it?

There are those who feel that UNIX is a bad and evil thing, that it's
not to be trusted and that those who use really are welching on their
fundamental obligation to pay homage to Microsoft.

Nonetheless, a great many people seem to do OK with it, and a noticeable
fraction of the labs around UTS are filled with it.

So, allow me to propose utter heresy:

Make use of ProgSoc's base of technical skills, the fact that last year
the Exec agreed in principal that there was no problem with ProgSoc
facilities being used for coursework and ProgSoc's installed
infrastructure and start turning ITD PCs that are currently being turned
into dogs with Win3 into actually useful Linux workstations.

There are a number of ways that this could be tackled. Here are some
random thoughts:

- Perhaps ITD PCs will bot from floppies. If so, create a boot floppy
for starting the process off.

- If not, set up an NCP server on a ProgSoc machine, then work out an
absolute minimum set of commands to mount the share and run loadlin to
boot Linux.

- Perhaps if you ask ITD particularly nicely, a batch file could be
installed somewhere in the standard image to simplify the process.

- This is an entirely sensible use of currently under-utilised ITD
facilities. It does not involve any breaches of ITD's AUP - as long as
you are only using free software and it allows students to take greater
advantage of ITD's installed infrastructure at no cost to ITD.

- NFS across ProgSoc's firewall is probably not on, however SMB may be.
Can Linux boot with its root on an SMB (or for that matter NCP) share?

- Perhaps all that is to be booted is a minimal Linux with an X-server
that makes good use of the PC's video hardware and that all that you run
will actually be on remote ProgSoc/ITD UNIX hosts.

That's probably enough to start with.

Thoughts anyone?

- Raz
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