Put most simply, Wayfinding is a building map router, that uses jQuery and SVG to help individuals navigate from room to room in multi story buildings.  Ideal for libraries that are often a complicated maze of book stacks.  Enjoy!

Yes, Google and the internet (specifically Wikipedia) have already put libraries out of the business of providing basic reference material.

No, Google and the internet will not put libraries out of the business of lending books in the short run.  More importantly, Libraries for the foreseeable future will the the primary conduit for most people to access high quality and expensive research databases like Pub Med and other walled off online journals.

One interesting factoid from the presentation: The Encyclopedia Britannica contains about 100,000 articles and costs over $1,000 for a set of books. Wikipedia has over 3,000,000 articles and is completely free.  Wikipedia is 30 times larger than Britannica, and is widening it’s lead on a daily basis.

For now the Goliath vs. David battle is a draw

Tagged: education, Google, libraries, OpenSource, publishing, research ]]> http://richmccue.com/2010/03/04/google-vs-the-library-goliath-vs-david/feed/ 2 48.483174 -123.319451 48.483174 -123.319451 richmccue Wikipedia http://richmccue.com/2009/08/25/zotero/ http://richmccue.com/2009/08/25/zotero/#comments Tue, 25 Aug 2009 18:57:39 +0000 Rich McCue http://richmccue.com/?p=165 ]]> Cost: Free for Zotero - URL: http://zotero.org

Just in case you’re not familiar with Zotero or Endnote, here a description that I lifted from the Zotero website that describes both products: “Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] is a software tool to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources.”   It is also very helpful in building bibliographies, because when your cite books via online journals, or your library’s website, Zotero captures all the bibliographic data available on the page.  Zotero started out as a Firefox plugin, but is now developing a web interfaces that can be used by the iPhone web browser.   At this point the Zotero Web interface is view only, and is not specially formatted for small form factor devices, but on the iPhone at least you can go in and browser your library of citations.

Access Citation information away from your computer: You are talking to a colleague at a conference, and while your discussing the importance of Vannevar Bush’s concept of the “Memex” machine, you remember a book that you recently cited in a paper you wrote. You pull out your iPhone, click on your short cut to your Zotero library on line, and quickly browse to the citation.

A very nice feature in the latest beta version of Zotero is the ability to sync your database of citations to a Zotero server, so that you can access all your citation information on any computer with a Firefox web browser.  For people who move between computers regularly (like between a desktop and laptop computer for example), this feature in invaluable. Hopefully Zotero will offer more a more smart phone accessible in the near future.

• The opening plenary session was by Paul Maharg, who talked about the importance of learning by doing. In particular he spoke about how students typically learn best through performance of authentic transactions involving doing what they are supposed to be learning, and then reflection on what they’ve done. Much like the “case” method that the UVic Business School has used for many years (since I was there in fact). Here are his slides.
• The rest of the day I spent at a Drupal seminar … very good law school community building up around Drupal for law school and law library websites, with custom modules being created, and good person to person support in the community (IRC.Freenode.net #Tecknoids). Build new Law Centre and Law Library websites using the Drupal framework.
• Hiring a Contractor for your Website CMS Implementation – Boone, Nann, Yale Law School.
  • Lesson 1: Choose your CMS first, don’t let your contractor sell you on “their CMS”
  • Lesson 2: Choose your contractor second.
  • Lesson 3: Make the contractor Accountable for Delays (include penalties for the missing of milestones in the development process).
  • Lesson 4: Require Detailed Documentation for end users.
  • Lesson 5: Be an active participant – find out how things work, and let them know how you work.
• Fun with Digital Signage – Dewald, University of Utah School of Law. THIS IS WHAT WE SHOULD USE IN THE LAW LIBRARY AND LAW SCHOOL. Uses for digital signs: General Info, Events, maps, traffic, news (rss feeds, videos), room schedules, emergency info. Some things to consider before making the plunge:
  • Why are we using them? Do we have a clear purpose?
  • What content are we going to display? Who’s going to be in charge?
  • Have you identified strategic display locations? (lobby, near 158/159, library entrance??).
  • DAN – display & alert network. All you need is an internet connected old computer.
    • Cost $69USD per month, per display site (e.g. 5 displays displaying the same thing is $69 per month).
    • Completely web based utility to update and manage the displays.
    • Can develop a web application to display on the web page.
    • Can make templates for different resolution Monitors… Could use What ever sized monitor do you need.
    • Broadcast Converter over CAT5 w/ a VGA converter… or hook up to a PC in the cealing.
    • Reporting software built in so you can tell if a monitor is down.
    • http://www.akaditech.com/
  • This looks like this is the way to go… much less expensive than other systems I’ve seen.
  • Drawbacks, need to have a computer hooked up to every screen.
  • Have a 30 day trial for testing purposes.dewalda@law.utah.edu for a demo.
  • This solution is much, much less expensive than other solutions, but literally thousands of dollars. Their monthly cost, is less than the support costs of other systems.
• Social networking for Law Schools – Ginsberg
  • We Need to teach students how to present themselves professionally on social networks.
  • Facebook – libraries and law schools can join… have a special application form. Resist the urge to install a ton of apps on your page. 22% of law libraries have facebook pages (at least of those in attendace at the session. Some times public communications officers will maintain the facebook presence. Networks on Facebook are going away… being replaced by Groups… drag stuff in via RSS feeds (photos, events, podcasts).
  • Privacy concerns on all all social networks. Where is the boundry between personal & professional. some people have 2 accounts… one for professional and one for personal.
  • Who are you talking to? What is important to them? Who will administer the site? How much time and money are reasonable? What features re available? Exit plan if you want to get out, or the site is not kept up to date?
  • Social Network are potentally a place for people to complain about the law school – need to have someone “living” there to check on things and counter any unwarranted negative information.
• RSS & Widgets How to put your law school on My Yahoo, iGoogle, Facebook and My Space – Len Davidson, Catholic University Law School. It would be interesting to experment with this at the Law Library. Sounds very easy to do a test using something like widgetbox.com. Maybe to a Mac widget first, as it sounds like Mac users, use widgets more than other users. We should at least create a “Chat with librarian” widget for google chat.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper
e-mail: HarpeS@parl.gc.ca
House of Commons
Parliament Buildings
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A6

December, 8, 2007

Prime Minister Harper,

I have voted for the Conservative party my whole adult life, so I hope the rumours that my party is about to introduce a version of the DMCA in Canada is not true. I work in at the University of Victoria Library, so I know how important fair use is for creativity to flourish.

DRM systems do little to protect intellectual property right holders works, and criminalize fair use behavior that most people would consider reasonable. Most people are honest, and want to pay for the digital content they use. DRM makes those digital harder to transfer between devices, and encourages people to look for non illegal non DRM sources for digital content.

Thank-you for your time.

Rich McCue
1813 Penshurst Rd.
Victoria, BC
V8N 2N6

As a systems administrator who also supports a number of end users on PC’s, I see how a tool like Screencast-o-matic could make my life easier by allowing me to quickly create a tutorial (like how to add a new printer). I can then post it on Google video, and the next time someone asks me how to add a printer, I simply send them a link to the video. You also have the option of hosting the screen cast on the Screencast-o-matic web site if you sign up for an account (no account is necessary to do screen casts though).

You also have the option of recording audio with your screen casts (or not). This can make the process of creating a screen cast much quicker, which is what is probably the most important feature for me. For people looking for full featured screen cast software, you’ll probably want to keep looking. Here are some of the things that Screencast-o-matic cannot currently do:

• Add labels to the screen cast.
• Visibly indicate when a button has been pressed.
• Bookmark different points in the screencast for fast forwarding

While not for everyone, Screencast-o-matic is great for people who want to try out screen casting. Commercial screen cast software pricing starts at about $400, so you can’t beat the price / performance ratio of Screencast-o-matic. The software is also cross platform, and will run on all Windows, Mac and Linux computers that have Java (or JVM) installed. One other good opensource option is CamStudio, but unfortunately it is windows only software.

09 f9 11 02 9d 74 e3 5b d8 41 56 c5 63 56 88 c0

Why you ask… Well, that jumble of letters and numbers is the hexadecimal key needed to decrypt and watch the new HD DVDs. According to US law, because I am publishing information that could help someone circumvent copy protection software, I am breaking the DMCA. The knowledge and software tools to break the copy protection of regular DVDs has been widely known for some time now.

So why would I want to circumvent the copy protection of a HD DVD, or a DVD for that matter… unless I were a criminal wanting to steal the contents of the DVD? There are a number of reasons why:

1. If I want to play a HD DVD on my laptop, there is currently no way to do it unless I circumvent the copy protection and copy the contents of the DVD on to my laptop. Currently there are very few laptops with HD DVD drives.
2. If I want to play a HD DVD on my Linux computers at home I will have to circumvent the copy protection. There are no legal HD DVD players for Linux. If I want to play a HD DVD on my Linux computers I will have to use “illegal” software to do so (using the above key).
3. If I want to play a HD DVD on my iPod I will have to circumvent the copy protection to do so.
4. If I wanted to take a small piece of video to play as part of a class presentation (which is perfectly legal under the fair use doctrine in copyright law) I would have to break the DMCA in order to capture that little bit of video.

The copy protection built into HD DVDs severely limits how and where I can watch the movies. In the case of the iPod, I could pay for another version of the movie so I would watch it on my iPod, but I don’t really want to pay double just to watch the movie on another device. Buying multiple copies of the same movie would make the Movie Picture Association of America (MPAA) happy though; and richer. Somehow I think greed and the buying of politicians votes are part of this long and sordid story.

In any case, once the hex key had been discovered (The person who cracked the key said he did so in order to watch movies on his laptop), someone posted the key to the Digg.com social web site. Shortly after, Digg received a DMCA take down notice from lawyers representing the group who created the HD DVD encryption technology. Digg took down the posting, but it was immediately posted again, and promoted to the home page. Digg tried to take down all the postings, but by Tuesday evening they had given up. Every single page promoted to the home page of the web site had the offending key in the posting. Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg, wrote on his blog:

After seeing the hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be. If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.

Kevin and the Digg community know how moronic and unfair the Movie industry is behaving. Real criminals will not be stopped by the DMCA or copy protection. They only hurt people who want to have some choice in how they consume their digital content.

Canada does not yet have an equivalent to the DMCA, but it looks like it might be coming. Michael Geist, a law professor, talks about the “Canadian DMCA” which will probably be introduced in Parliament this spring, in the guise of copyright reform. Write your federal politician, and let’s make sure we don’t get our own version of a very bad law.

The draw back to this is, that any practicing lawyer would not want to host any client research information on a 3rd party web server.  A couple of options I’m exploring to get around this problem are XAMPP, and UniformServer. What both of these software packages allow you to do is to install a LAMP, or WAMP software stack on a computer or even a thumb drive, and run the web application on a desktop PC.  This stores the data on the PC or USB thumb drive, getting around the reluctance of lawyers to use 3rd party services.

From the UniformServer web site:

The Uniform Server is a WAMP package that allows you to run a server on any MS Windows OS based computer. It is small and mobile to download or move around and can also be used or setup as a production/live server. Developers also use The Uniform Server to test their applications made with either PHP, MySQL, Perl, or the Apache HTTPd Server.

It will be interesting to see how well this works in practice. In particular, I’ll be interested to see how easy it is to upgrade the web application, and maintain the data in the database.  For the record, XAMPP will run on Linux, Windows, and Mac OSX computers.

read more | digg story

read more | digg story

The increasing volume of digital information with which researchers’ work is making the task of finding, capturing, organizing and eventually collaborating with digital data more difficult.  Electronic information in multiple formats sitting in multiple silos of data present a challenge to researchers who have difficulty finding a specific piece of information in a timely fashion.

The two major benefits that come from effective knowledge management and knowledge sharing are an increase in the speed and quality of the research being performed. Less time is spent looking for information that has already been identified or created, so that more time can be spent in analyzing and associating disparate pieces of information. Modern electronic tools make possible collaboration between colleagues that in the past would have been difficult, expensive, or impossible.  Voice and video conferencing over high speed research networks can facilitate real time collaboration at a fraction of the cost in time and money of flying members of a research team to a central location. On line collaboration tools can greatly facilitate group document creation and editing, and when it comes time to polish the final product, real time document editing makes it possible for groups scattered around the world to review a document together and make edits together.

Once researchers have the appropriate software to manage their data and help them collaborate, they need to make sure that they also have the appropriate hardware and infrastructure to take full advantage of the benefits the new software will give them. Access to high speed research networks is a must for video and voice conferencing, as well as real time document editing. An average desktop computer with two monitors, instead of the traditional single monitor, will give researchers a 10% + boost in productivity. Finally a web camera and good quality head phone/microphone rounds out a well equipped research workstation.

Whether they realize it or not, most researchers are struggling with the mountains of digital data that they have accumulated during their careers. If shown the tools available to them to find, capture and collaborate,  many, if not most, will start to use some of these knowledge management tools to increase their productivity and effectively manage and collaborate with their data.

Geekcorps, a division of IESC, promotes economic growth in the developing world by sending highly skilled technology volunteers to teach communities how to use innovative and affordable information and communication technologies to solve development problems.

This looks like a wonderful way for IT to give back. 

Back in October, Rich McCue, from the University of Victoria, posted to Teknoids
a list of his favorite Open Source software packages for law students. I became
intrigued by an item near the end of his list called “FreeMind.” In Rich’s words,
FreeMind “is a mind mapping software that is great for brain storming, and
organizing projects, or your thoughts . . . Give it a try, it is a wonderful
product.”

The e-mail Eric references is here. 

read more | digg story

Alfresco is Java based, and runs on top of Tomcat of JBoss frameworks. It includes team collaboration spaces, version handling, wizards for administration, content handling, in-line editing of web content, desktop integration for launching and saving of content (done via windows file sharing or WebDav.

Because it is an opensource project there is not the same level of vendor lock-in.  Take a flash tour of the software if you are interested. You can download here. Technorati Profile

To be clear, we were looking for software that uses a peer to peer model for distributed backups in an untrusted environment.  For example I would install the client software on my computer, and would tell it how much data I want to backup (50 GB for example). The software would then ask me how much redundancy I want (1,2,3,4… copies of the backup). Then it would tell me that for that particular level of backup I would need to make 150MB available on my hard drive for other people to store their backups.  The backups would be digitally signed and encrypted for privacy and integrity purposes.  This selection of backup computers on the internet would be done automatically by default, or manually if desired. 

I’ve installed DIBS on my laptop (on the linux side of my laptop), but have not installed it on another computer. I hope to try it out when I get home.  It was also written in Python (which is a language that I’m trying to use more right now), so that is another reason for me to try to get involved on some level in this project.

http://www.howtoforge.com/virtual_postfix_mysql_quota_courier

From the article:

Grace Lutheran’s installation stats:

• >60 Pentium 1 and Pentium II computers for 250 total students
• One computer lab of 25 computers
• 9 classrooms with an average of four computers in each classroom
• Actual cost of Linux thin client conversion for all 60 computers: under $15,000
• Estimated annual maintenance cost: $3,600
• Comparable cost of PC/Windows installation: $50,000
• Estimated annual maintenance cost of a PC/Windows solution: $24,000
• Net yearly savings, based on four-year replacement cycle: $29,150

http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT3124052951.html

http://www.howtoforge.com/book/print/59

I have also created a PDF with the contents of the above article, just in case it goes away.

An interesting project that is mentioned in the article is ISPConfig. It is an open source software package for managing websites at an ISP level. Here is the url to the website:

http://www.ispconfig.org/

Before you start, consider blogging’s place in your workgroup’s communication infrastructure. A wiki is an outstanding tool for public collaboration, while email excels at person-to-person communication. Blogging occupies a useful niche between these.

Blogs can provide an important venue for certain kinds of information. For example, a business development manager can provide daily reports on sales calls without waiting for some specific progress to report (e.g. a contract signing) as he might want to do before sending a company-wide email. As a result of having more information about the manager’s customer visits, participants in design meetings may be better equipped to balance upcoming feature releases.

As another example, a project architect could release a series of blog entries detailing long-term goals and intentions for a project. Co-workers could then respond to, and help refine, the architect’s ideas. At the same time, the employees taking direction from the project architect will develop a better idea of what the architect has in mind and pursue their own work accordingly.

In short, by providing an informal window into a person’s or team’s work, you can foster better communication between co-workers.

The speaker for the opening plenary session was Stephen Webber, and Poly Sci professor from UC Berkley. He gave an insightful presentation on the origins and underlying mechanics of the open source software projects. He also spoke about how Open Source has been able to overcome some big problems that commercial software houses have been struggling with for years, in particular Brooke’s Law. Brooke stated that for each additional programmer added to a project, the work done scale lineally, but the complications in the project increase geometrically. The way open source software is created does not seem to have this limitation, to the same degree, as closed source projects. He concluded by saying that he hopes that both open and closed source software project remain healthy, and that the competitiveness between the two will help create better software for everyone in the long run. The only thing that might be able to limit the ability of open source projects to continue to flourish is software patents.

The next session I went to was excellent as well. It was a demo of closed source piece of software called Onfolio. It is a research tool that integrates into your web browser (both IE and Firefox), and allows you to capture data from web pages, organize that data, mark up the data, and then publish that organized data to RSS feed, blogs. You can also share the data in a Point to Point network with people you are collaborating with.  It looks like a great piece of software. I just need to find a research project to try it out on to see how well it does when pushed to its’ limits. For anyone doing research I recommend you download the 30 day trial version, it could help you be much more productive than you currently are when doing online research.

The next three sessions where good, but more technically geared. One was on Dspace, the next on congnative learning styles, and finally on Enterprise Storage and backup.  Good info, but nothing earth shattering. There was also a good session on network security that was a good reminder of things that all Sys Admins know that they should be doing.

Next was a session on Class Scheduling. Not something that I have to do, but the software that was being demoed looks like it could save the person assigned to do the scheduling a ton of time, and make a better schedule as well.  The software is called Schedule Whiz. It appears to have taken into account every conceivable variable when trying to schedule class rooms, student, professors and equipment. This means that it is very flexible and powerful, but could take some time to use the full power of it.  I think that Yvonne (our administrator) will try out the 60 demo version this spring.

Finally the last session before I did my presentation was called Using Innovative Video Technology to Facilitate Skills Instruction. It was an EXCELLENT session. As you might have guessed by the title, Dr. Farmer from BYU is using laptop based video technology every week in his interviewing class. He found that only doing 4 video taped interviews per semester was not enough for the students to become proficient in the techniques he was trying to get them to learn, so he went from 4 exercises to 22 exercises, and the results were impressive.  The law school bought 44 high quality web cameras and put them on reserve in the library. Students select one fact pattern to use throughout the semester. The Used sharepoint portal software to distribute materials during the class, including instructions fo the exercise, and then to store the video in a safe location for Dr. Famer to review them and grade them. Students reviewed their own videos and then Dr. Farmer commented on their self-reviews and added his own comments.  I hope we can try something similar to this at UVic.  They are in the middle of developing some custom software to  capture the video and annotate bookmarks in the video files. There should be a video of the presentation on the conference web page in a week or two.

My presentation on Open Source OPAC’s went well, with lots of questions, and a good discussion at the end of the session. Here is a link to a flash version of my presentation.

It was an enjoyable conference at Kent Law School in Chicago. The main items that I would like to see us move forward on at the UVic Law School are the Video Technology to teach skills, Schedule Whiz, and Onfolio.  We are already using a lot of open source products at the law school. 

• Many people are not using tapes for backing up… Hard drives with off-line storage.
• Some enterprise and open source hardware and software.
• Hourly backups for the last 24 hours, nightly backups for the last week, and monthly backups.
• $50K for an EMC systems.
• Can use Rsync, but more processor intensive.  BackupPC is also an option.

• Libraries and Researchers wanted to get out of purchasing expensive repositories. Prices were rising by 20 to 30% per year. Looked to online journals for publishing.
• What about peer review?  Universities and sometimes prof’s will pay for peer review.
• Articles are much more likely to be cited if they are in open access journals than if they are in a paid journal; by an extremely large margin.
• Open Archives Initiative’s Protocol for Meta data Harvesting. Provides for application – independent framework for meta data transfer for federating searching.
• Before you pay for a closed source IR, check out the open source options.

• Peer review becomes more feasable in the law setting, because the in house law journals become more readily available.

• apple 1984 ad  Orwellian theme. Now Apple is using the propietary software on proprietary hardware. And IBM is open sourcing everything.
• Open source applicable in other areas other than software?  Other areas of collaboration.
• If you have infinate free copies of something, and it costs you nothing to give it away, then why not give it away?
• Napster free riding phenomonin… most people look it as a trade. While some people did free ride, free riding didn’t matter much.  Same thing happens in open source. Lots of people use software without contributing much back to the community.
• Volunteerism – Wikipedia is an example. Modern day barn raising. Works in some areas but not in others… for example Volunteer ism poetry. How do you govern what is put into open source projects? Must have good mechanisms.
• How do we manage distributed innovation?
• “The mythical man month” As programmers are added to a project the work done scales linerally, but the complications increase geometrically. – Brooke’s law
• Open Source has crated a system that get’s around Brooke’s law; or at least manages the worst parts of it better.

• Open source does not address a traditional commons problem. Open Source is a massive experiment with alternative property rights. Property right around distribution rather than exclusion. They created a production process that rests on distributed innovation, tather than a traditional division of labour. Challenging the notion that the Fordist industrial organization is either an inevitable or the best way to produce complex knowledge goods.
• Toyota JIT system from 1985… People said that It just works in Automotive, It only works for the japanese, It’s magic. 
• Now Open source: It just works in software, long haired geeks writing for long haired geeks, Linus is a Magician.
• A simple model of organized open systems
• The foundation: Property as the right to distributed Micromotives
• Macro organizations: Parallel distributed innovation and costly exclusion from cooperation. Innovation emerges at the edges and gets incorporated into more complex systems when and if it improves the performance of the whole.
• Some lessons from Open Source:
• The GPL is not just a licences, it’s a constitutional statement.
• Clear expectations that defectors will be shunned. You may end up working on a problem alone that other’s are cooperating on.
• Constant communication, in ‘public’ spaces. The openess of the records of conversations makes open fights less likely… people focus on problems.
• No black holes
• No battle between open and closed systems, but rather a co -evolution.
• Creative Commons vs. Mickey Mouse.
• Patented drugs vs. generics.
• These images are wrong. We don’t want either side to win. The vibrant economies exist where the two join. Eg. In New York

SCREEN_02 = rdesktop yourservernamehere

Then when the thin client boots up, you’ll be faced with a Linux login window. But hit ctrl-alt-f2 and you’ll be faced with a Windows Terminal Server login. Ctrl-alt-f1 gets you back to Linux. You can use both systems simultaneously.

http://desktops.linux.com/desktops/04/07/01/1833212.shtml?tid=49&tid=99&tid=13

Title A parent’s guide to Linux Web filtering
Date 2004.07.01 13:20
Author warthawg
Topic

http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=04/07/01/1833212

Having converted quite a few people to the world of GNU/Linux, I am often asked by parents, “Can I set up parental Web filters for my children using Linux?” The answer is yes, and here’s how.

A Web filter is a software that can filter the type of content a Web browser displays. The filter checks the content of a Web page against a set of rules and replaces any unwanted content with an alternative Web page, usually an “Access Denied” page. The type of content to be filtered is usually controlled by a systems administrator or a parent. Web filters are used in schools, libraries, and homes to safeguard children from obscene content on the Internet.

Before you begin, you should be familiar with some basic networking concepts:

* A server, as in “Web server,” is nothing more than an application that runs on a computer and listens for incoming requests. It sends back, or serves, information to the source that requested the information. This information can be anything from Web pages to databases. Each server communicates through the use of an IP address and a port number.
* Ports are logical addresses that applications on a computer use in a way similar to how we use phone numbers. Each server program must have a unique port that it uses for communications.
* Every computer connected to the Internet has both an external IP (Internet Protocol) address, usually assigned by an Internet service provider, and an internal address of 127.0.0.1. The internal address allows the computer to “listen” and “talk” to itself and is referred to as the loopback address. Normally a server is set up to accept requests from other computers on the Internet by listening on its external address. Since this can present a security risk for our single computer, we will use the loopback address instead. This will cause our server to only listen for requests from the computer that the server resides on.
* A firewall is an application that controls the types of communication your computer can send and receive. GNU/Linux has an excellent firewall called netfilter/iptables, or simply iptables, built right into the kernel, which we will make use of to redirect users’ Web surfing through our Web filter.

Getting the software

The only software you need to set up parental filters under GNU/Linux is iptables, DansGuardian, and Squid.

DansGuardian is the actual filtering software. It supports phrase matching, which allow you to block out Web sites that contain certain phrases or words; PICS filtering, which blocks content that’s been labeled as possibly objectionable material by the creator of the Web site; URL filtering, to block content from specific sites that are known to contain offensive material; and blacklists, or lists of sites that contain content you want to block. Blacklists usually come from third parties, though you can create and maintain your own.

Squid is a Web proxy server that acts as a middleman between your computer and the Internet. You need a proxy server because DansGuardian isn’t able to fetch Web pages by itself. We’ll configure Squid as a transparent proxy, meaning we’ll hijack network traffic and redirect it to a new destination — our filter program, in this case — without the need for the user to know that it is happening.

Most modern distribution have packaged versions of Squid and DansGuardian available. If yours doesn’t then you will need to install them from source code. Both the Squid and DansGuardian Web sites have complete instructions for how to compile and install the programs from source.

Iptables is the firewall management tool used with the 2.4.x and higher kernels. Most modern distributions provide iptables. If yours doesn’t, you will need to compile a new kernel and enable iptables, which is beyond the scope of this article (and probably beyond the abilities of most parents). You’d probably be better off upgrading to a newer Linux distribution.

Configuring Squid

The default location for the Squid configuration file on most systems is /etc/squid/squid.conf. While most of the default settings for Squid are all right for our usage, you will need to edit the configuration file just a bit.

You will need to become the root user in order to make the changes and issue the commands shown in this article. You can do this by either logging in as root or with the su command.

Add or edit the following line to have Squid listen only on the loopback device on port 3128. This will cause Squid to act only as a proxy server for this computer and assigns it a specific port number to listen on:

http_port 127.0.0.1:3128

To configure Squid as a transparent proxy, add the following lines to squid.conf:

httpd_accel_host virtual
httpd_accel_port 80
httpd_accel_with_proxy on
httpd_accel_uses_host_header on

Your system should have created a user and a group named squid when you installed Squid. If it didn’t, you should create them yourself by using the following two commands from the command line:

groupadd -r squid
useradd -g squid -d /var/spool/squid -s /bin/false -r squid

Since Squid is normally started by the system and run as root, you need to add the next two lines to /etc/squid/squid.conf in order to make Squid run with squid’s user and group IDs:

cache_effective_user squid
cache_effective_group squid

We will later use this to identify Squid to our firewall. Then we will allow the user squid to access the Internet while we redirect all other Web traffic through our filter.

Configuring DansGuardian

Our next step is to configure DansGuardian. The default location, on most systems, for the configuration files is /etc/dansguardian/dansguardian.conf. Once again, most of the default values are fine, but we need to make a few changes.

First, add or edit the following line to make the filter use HTML templates, which are static Web pages that our filter will use to display the “Access Denied” page instead of the inappropriate sites. Using HTML templates keeps us from having to set up a Web server to display the “Access Denied” information.

reportinglevel = 3

Next, add or edit the following lines to make DansGuardian listen on the loopback address and port 8080:

filterip = 127.0.0.1
filterport = 8080

Add or edit the following line to tell DansGuardian which address and port that Squid is listening on. This enables our filter to fetch the requested Web content through the proxy.

proxyip = 127.0.0.1
proxyport = 3128

Again, to keep your filter from running as root you need to change the user that it will run as. For simplicity, we will reuse the user and group that we previously set up for Squid. Add or edit the following to make DansGuardian run with UID and GID of squid:

daemonuser = ‘squid’
daemongroup = ‘squid’

While DansGuardian provides an excellent filter all by itself, you may want to exercise further control over the Web filtering by editing the other files in the /etc/dansguardian directory that contain external blacklists. Blacklists from squidGuard and URLBlacklist work perfectly with DansGuardian. Each file contains a brief explanation for its contents to make configuration easier.

Putting it in action

Once you have Squid and DansGuardian set up, the final step is to implement a transparent proxy using iptables. Use the following commands at the command line to add rules to the firewall to allow the user squid to access both the Internet and the Squid proxy we set up.

iptables -t nat -A OUTPUT -p tcp –dport 80 -m owner –uid-owner squid -j ACCEPT

iptables -t nat -A OUTPUT -p tcp –dport 3128 -m owner –uid-owner squid -j ACCEPT

If you want a user to be exempt from filtering — a parent, for example — issue the following command. Replace EXEMPT_USER with the username that you wish to exempt from filtering:

iptables -t nat -A OUTPUT -p tcp –dport 80 -m owner –uid-owner EXEMPT_USER -j ACCEPT

The next command redirects Internet traffic from all users, other than squid and any exempt users, to the filter on port 8080:

iptables -t nat -A OUTPUT -p tcp –dport 80 -j REDIRECT –to-ports 8080

Since we have a proxy server set up, a user could configure a Web browser to bypass the filter and access the proxy directly. The Squid proxy is listening for requests from the computer, and it doesn’t care which user sends the request. We could set up our firewall to deny all access to the proxy except from our filter, but let’s be a little sneakier. Let’s set it up so that direct requests to the Squid proxy server, except from our filter, get redirected through the filter. To do this, use the following command:

iptables -t nat -A OUTPUT -p tcp –dport 3128 -j REDIRECT –to-ports 8080

Some systems, such as MandrakeLinux, utilize an application called Shorewall to manage firewall rules. For these systems, place the above firewall rules in /etc/shorewall/start, to use the filtering when Shorewall starts, and in /etc/shorewall/stop, to make them stick if you should stop Shorewall for some reason. To implement the new rules simply restart Shorewall using the following command:

service shorewall restart

For systems using Shorewall, your firewall rules are set. For all other systems, you’ll need to perform the next two steps in order to get the new firewall rules started at boot time. Issue the following command to save your firewall rules:

iptables-save > /etc/sysconfig/iptables

Now issue the following to make sure iptables is started at boot time and to start the iptables firewall:

chkconfig iptables on
service iptables restart

You may also need to make sure that DansGuardian and Squid get started at boot by using the following two commands:

chkconfig squid on
chkconfig dansguardian on

To get the filtering started, you can now enter the following commands:

service squid restart
service dansguardian restart

The “Access Denied” screen – click to enlarge

Now when users enter a forbidden Web address they will be presented with an “Access Denied” page instead of the offending site. You can customize the look of the “Access Denied” page by editing the template.html file in the appropriate language section located in /etc/dansguardian/languages.

Final thoughts

While the setup discussed in this article is intended for use on a single computer, this method of Web filtering can be applied to a wide range of scenarios. These tools can be easily and successfully implemented on a small home network, a large business infrastructure, or any environment that needs to comply with the Children’s Internet Protection Act.

Bear in mind that Web filtering software of any kind is not 100% failsafe, nor is it a substitute for parental supervision. Along with installing filtering software, educate yourself and your children about the Internet.

If you have any questions about the project, please get in touch with me.

The Perfect Setup – White Box Linux / Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0

Version 1.0
Author: Falko Timme
Last edited 03/22/2004

This is a detailed description about the steps to be taken to setup a Linux server based on White Box Linux that offers all services needed by ISPs and hosters (web server (SSL-capable), mail server (with SMTP-AUTH and TLS!), DNS server, FTP server, MySQL server, POP3/IMAP, Quota, Firewall, etc.).

Since White Box Linux is very similar to Red Hat Enterprise Linux this tutorial should also work for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. From the White Box Linux website:

“This product is derived from the Free/Open Source Software made available by Red Hat, Inc but IS NOT produced, maintained or supported by Red Hat. Specifically, this product is forked from the source code for Red Hat’s _Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3_ product under the terms and conditions of it’s EULA.

There may be remaining packaging problems and other odd bugs. These are solely the responsibility of the White Box Linux effort and should not in any shape, manner or form reflect on the quality of Red Hat’s commercial product. In fact, if you need a fully tested and supported OS you probably should go buy their box set. “

The following services will be installed:

* Web Server: Apache 2.0.x
* Mail Server: Postfix (easier to configure than sendmail; has a shorter history of security holes than sendmail)
* DNS Server: BIND9
* FTP Server: vsftpd (you could also use vsftpd)
* POP3/IMAP: ipop3d/imapd
* Webalizer for web site statistics

In the end you should have a system that works reliably and is ready for the server control panel 42go ISP-Manager (this is optional; you can install any other control panel or no control panel at all).

I want to say first that this is not the only way of setting up such a system. There are many ways of achieving this goal but this is the way I take. I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!

Quota

Edit /etc/fstab to look like this (I added ,usrquota,grpquota to partition LABEL=/home):

LABEL=/ / ext3 defaults 1 1
none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
LABEL=/home /home ext3 defaults,usrquota,grpquota 1 2
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
/dev/hda5 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0

Then run:

touch /home/aquota.user /home/aquota.group
chmod 600 /home/aquota.*
mount -o remount /home
quotacheck -avugm
quotaon -avug

Start Services

All software we need is already installed on the system. Now we have to configure the system to start these services at boot time:

chkconfig httpd on
chkconfig vsftpd on
chkconfig mysqld on
chkconfig named on
chkconfig saslauthd on
chkconfig ipop3 on
chkconfig imap on
chkconfig cups off
chkconfig isdn off
chkconfig kudzu off
chkconfig pcmcia off
chkconfig sendmail off
chkconfig postfix on

Now we start the services we need:

/etc/init.d/sendmail stop
/etc/init.d/postfix start
/etc/init.d/httpd start
/etc/init.d/mysqld start
/etc/init.d/vsftpd start
/etc/init.d/named start
/etc/init.d/saslauthd start

Make sure /etc/hosts looks like this:

# Do not remove the following line, or various programs
# that require network functionality will fail.
127.0.0.1 server1.example.com server1 localhost.localdomain localhost

MySQL

You should set a password for your MySQL database (the password for the MySQL user root; the default one is an empty password):

mysqladmin -u root password yourrootsqlpassword

If you already have a non-empty password, and you want to change it, use this command:

mysqladmin -u root -pyourrootsqlpassword password yournewrootsqlpassword

(Please note: There is no blank between -p and yourrootsqlpassword!)

Postfix

We have to configure Postfix in order to enable SMTP-AUTH and TLS.

First, we generate the certificate files needed for TLS:

mkdir /etc/postfix/ssl
cd /etc/postfix/ssl/

openssl genrsa -des3 -rand /etc/hosts -out smtpd.key 1024

<- Enter a password for smtpd.key.

chmod 600 smtpd.key
openssl req -new -key smtpd.key -out smtpd.csr

<- Again, enter your password for smtpd.key.
<- Enter your Country Name (e.g., "DE").
<- Enter your State or Province Name.
<- Enter your City.
<- Enter your Organization Name (e.g., the name of your company).
<- Enter your Organizational Unit Name (e.g. "IT Department").
<- Enter the Fully Qualified Domain Name of the system (e.g. "server1.example.com").
<- Enter your Email Address.

The following information is optional:

<- Enter a challenge password.
<- Enter an optional company name.

openssl x509 -req -days 3650 -in smtpd.csr -signkey smtpd.key -out smtpd.crt

<- Again, enter your password for smtpd.key.

openssl rsa -in smtpd.key -out smtpd.key.unencrypted

<- Again, enter your password for smtpd.key.

mv -f smtpd.key.unencrypted smtpd.key
openssl req -new -x509 -extensions v3_ca -keyout cakey.pem -out cacert.pem -days 3650

<- Again, enter your password for smtpd.key.
<- Enter your Country Name (e.g., "DE").
<- Enter your State or Province Name.
<- Enter your City.
<- Enter your Organization Name (e.g., the name of your company).
<- Enter your Organizational Unit Name (e.g. "IT Department").
<- Enter the Fully Qualified Domain Name of the system (e.g. "server1.example.com").
<- Enter your Email Address.

Run the following commands in order to enable SMTP-AUTH and TLS in /etc/postfix/main.cf:

postconf -e 'mydomain = example.com'
postconf -e 'myhostname = server1.$mydomain'
postconf -e 'mynetworks = 127.0.0.0/8'
postconf -e 'smtpd_sasl_local_domain ='
postconf -e 'smtpd_sasl_auth_enable = yes'
postconf -e 'smtpd_sasl_security_options = noanonymous'
postconf -e 'broken_sasl_auth_clients = yes'
postconf -e 'smtpd_recipient_restrictions = permit_sasl_authenticated,permit_mynetworks,reject_unauth_destination'
postconf -e 'inet_interfaces = all'
postconf -e 'alias_maps = hash:/etc/aliases'
postconf -e 'smtpd_tls_auth_only = no'
postconf -e 'smtp_use_tls = yes'
postconf -e 'smtpd_use_tls = yes'
postconf -e 'smtp_tls_note_starttls_offer = yes'
postconf -e 'smtpd_tls_key_file = /etc/postfix/ssl/smtpd.key'
postconf -e 'smtpd_tls_cert_file = /etc/postfix/ssl/smtpd.crt'
postconf -e 'smtpd_tls_CAfile = /etc/postfix/ssl/cacert.pem'
postconf -e 'smtpd_tls_loglevel = 1'
postconf -e 'smtpd_tls_received_header = yes'
postconf -e 'smtpd_tls_session_cache_timeout = 3600s'
postconf -e 'tls_random_source = dev:/dev/urandom'

mv -f /etc/pam.d/smtp.postfix /etc/pam.d/smtp
/etc/init.d/postfix restart

To see if SMTP-AUTH and TLS work properly now run the following command:

telnet localhost 25

After you have established the connection to your postfix mail server type

ehlo localhost

If you see the lines

250-STARTTLS

and

250-AUTH

everything is fine.

Type

quit

to return to the system's shell.

Synchronize the System Clock

If you want to have the system clock synchronized with an NTP server you can add the following lines to /var/spool/cron/root (if the file does not exist, create it by running

touch /var/spool/cron/root):

# update time with ntp server
0 3,9,15,21 * * * /usr/bin/rdate 128.2.136.71 | logger -t NTP

Then run

chmod 600 /var/spool/cron/root
/etc/init.d/crond restart

Install the 42go ISP-Manager

If you want to install the 42go ISP-Manager on the system you have to do the following steps because the 42go ISP-Manager does not support White Box Linux / Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0 out of the box. But because all paths/settings are similar to those on Red Hat 9 (which is supported by the 42go ISP-Manager) you can make the installer of the 42go ISP-Manager believe that the system is running Red Hat 9:

rm -f /etc/redhat-release

Now create a new file /etc/redhat-release with the following contents:

Red Hat Linux release 9 (Shrike)

Now you can install the 42go ISP-Manager on the system as described here: http://www.projektfarm.com/downloads/manual/installation_en.pdf

Links

White Box Linux: http://www.whiteboxlinux.org/

Red Hat: http://www.redhat.com/

42go ISP-Manager: http://www.projektfarm.com/en/

K12LTSP Community,
The goal in our school district during the last few months has been to build a linux network that would allow all types of clients to authenticate and access home directories. However, the time and expertise required to install and configure LDAP/Samba was an issue.

We are happy to announce that we have developed a script that drastically reduces the amount of time it takes to install and configure LDAP/Samba on a K12LTSP 4.2 server (less than 30 minutes).

We have successfully authenticated clients and accessed home directories on thin clients, Windows XP, Macintosh, and Linux. We hope that this script will be of use to the K12LTSP open source community. We thank all of your for your continued work and support.

David Trask was instrumental in this project as he spent hundreds of hours in the development of the how-to and volunteered to test each version of the script. Matt Oquist is the talented programmer who authored the script. Art Reardon also spent endless hours in the testing and development process. Thanks to each of you for your work!

The script can be download by clicking on the download button at: http://technology.sau16.k12.nh.us/opnsrc

Steve Kossakoski
Assistant Superintendent,
Technology & Research
SAU 16,
24 Front Street
Exeter, NH 03833

e Burgess - bhb@iceburg.net# backup.sh -- backup to a local drive using rsync

# Directories to backup. Separate with a space. Exclude trailing slash!SOURCES="/home/wendy /home/daisy /var/mail"

# Directory to backup to. This is where your backup(s) will be stored.# Exclude trailing slash!TARGET="/mnt/usb-harddrive/backup"

# Your EXCLUDE_FILE tells rsync what NOT to backup. Leave it unchanged if you want# to backup all files in your SOURCES. If performing a FULL SYSTEM BACKUP, ie.# Your SOURCES is set to "/", you will need to make use of EXCLUDE_FILE.# The file should contain directories and filenames, one per line.# An example of a EXCLUDE_FILE would be:# /proc/# /tmp/# /mnt/# *.SOME_KIND_OF_FILE

EXCLUDE_FILE="/path/to/your/exclude_file.txt"

# Comment out the following line to disable verbose outputVERBOSE="-v"###########################

if [ ! -x $TARGET ]; then  echo "Backup target does not exist or you don't have permission!"  echo "Exiting..."  exit 2fi

echo "Verifying Sources..."for source in $SOURCES; do	echo "Checking $source..."	if [ ! -x $source ]; then     echo "Error with $source!"     echo "Directory either does not exist, or you do not have proper permissions."     exit 2   fidone

if [ -f $EXCLUDE_FILE ]; thenEXCLUDE="--exclude-from=$EXCLUDE_FILE"fi

echo "Sources verified. Running rsync..."for source in $SOURCES; do

  # Create directories in $TARGET to mimick source directory hiearchy  if [ ! -d $TARGET/$source ]; then    mkdir -p $TARGET/$source  fi

  rsync $VERBOSE --exclude=$TARGET/ $EXCLUDE -a --delete $source/ $TARGET/$source/

done

exit 0

hor: Brice Burgess - bhb@iceburg.net# multi_backup.sh -- backup to a local drive using rsync.#         Uses hard-link rotation to keep multiple backups.

# Directories to backup. Seperate with a space. Exclude trailing slash!SOURCES="/home/wendy /home/daisy /var/mail"

# Directory to backup to. This is where your backup(s) will be stored. No spaces in names!# :: NOTICE :: -> Make sure this directory is empty or contains ONLY backups created by#	                        this script and NOTHING else. Exclude trailing slash!TARGET="/mnt/usb-harddrive/backup"

# Set the number of backups to keep (greater than 1). Ensure you have adaquate space.ROTATIONS=3

# Your EXCLUDE_FILE tells rsync what NOT to backup. Leave it unchanged if you want# to backup all files in your SOURCES. If performing a FULL SYSTEM BACKUP, ie.# Your SOURCES is set to "/", you will need to make use of EXCLUDE_FILE.# The file should contain directories and filenames, one per line.# A good example would be:# /proc# /tmp# *.SOME_KIND_OF_FILEEXCLUDE_FILE="/path/to/your/exclude_file.txt"

# Comment out the following line to disable verbose outputVERBOSE="-v"

###############################################DO_NOT_EDIT_BELOW_THIS_POINT################################################

# Set name (date) of backup.BACKUP_DATE="`date +%F_%H-%M`"

if [ ! -x $TARGET ]; then  echo "Backup target does not exist or you don't have permission!"  echo "Exiting..."  exit 2fi

if [ ! $ROTATIONS -gt 1 ]; then  echo "You must set ROTATIONS to a number greater than 1!"  echo "Exiting..."  exit 2fi

#### BEGIN ROTATION SECTION ####

BACKUP_NUMBER=1# incrementor used to determine current number of backups

# list all backups in reverse (newest first) order, set name of oldest backup to $backup# if the retention number has been reached.for backup in `ls -dXr $TARGET/*/`; do	if [ $BACKUP_NUMBER -eq 1 ]; then		NEWEST_BACKUP="$backup"	fi

	if [ $BACKUP_NUMBER -eq $ROTATIONS ]; then		OLDEST_BACKUP="$backup"		break	fi

	let "BACKUP_NUMBER=$BACKUP_NUMBER+1"done

# Check if $OLDEST_BACKUP has been found. If so, rotate. If not, create new directory for this backup.if [ $OLDEST_BACKUP ]; then  # Set oldest backup to current one  mv $OLDEST_BACKUP $TARGET/$BACKUP_DATEelse	mkdir $TARGET/$BACKUP_DATEfi

# Update current backup using hard links from the most recent backupif [ $NEWEST_BACKUP ]; then  cp -al $NEWEST_BACKUP. $TARGET/$BACKUP_DATEfi#### END ROTATION SECTION ####

# Check to see if rotation section created backup destination directoryif [ ! -d $TARGET/$BACKUP_DATE ]; then  echo "Backup destination not available. Make sure you have write permission in TARGET!"  echo "Exiting..."  exit 2fi

echo "Verifying Sources..."for source in $SOURCES; do	echo "Checking $source..."	if [ ! -x $source ]; then     echo "Error with $source!"     echo "Directory either does not exist, or you do not have proper permissions."     exit 2   fidone

if [ -f $EXCLUDE_FILE ]; then	EXCLUDE="--exclude-from=$EXCLUDE_FILE"fi

echo "Sources verified. Running rsync..."for source in $SOURCES; do

  # Create directories in $TARGET to mimick source directory hiearchy  if [ ! -d $TARGET/$BACKUP_DATE/$source ]; then    mkdir -p $TARGET/$BACKUP_DATE/$source  fi

  rsync $VERBOSE --exclude=$TARGET/ $EXCLUDE -a --delete $source/ $TARGET/$BACKUP_DATE/$source/

done

exit 0

Links


Mondo – Mondo is reliable. It backs up your GNU/Linux server or workstation to tape, CD-R, CD-RW, NFS or hard disk partition. In the event of catastrophic data loss, you will be able to restore all of your data [or as much as you want], from bare metal if necessary. Mondo is in use by Lockheed-Martin, Nortel Networks, Siemens, HP (US and France), IBM, NASA’s JPL, the US Dept of Agriculture, dozens of smaller companies, and tens of thousands of users.

Mondo is comprehensive. Mondo supports LVM, RAID, ext2, ext3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS, VFAT, and can support additional filesystems easily: just e-mail the mailing list with your request. It supports adjustments in disk geometry, including migration from non-RAID to RAID. Mondo runs on all major Linux distributions and is getting better all the time. You may even use it to backup non-Linux partitions, such as NTFS.

Mondo is free! It has been published under the GPL (GNU Public License), partly to expose it to thousands of potential beta-testers but mostly as a contribution to the Linux community. I charge for 1-to-1 technical support to fund Mondo’s development.

http://www.microwerks.net/~hugo/index.html

http://davenport.sourceforge.net/

We are slowly acquiring a good deal of experience in approaching schools with the benefits of an Open Source Software lab. In a recent presentation at an ilearning conference for our Department of Education, I think I finally found the zone.

What I like to do first is to demonstrate the software. Using a donated laptop installed with the K12LTSP, I go through these slides:

http://www.hosef.org/projects/eschool/ilearning/presentationoo.sxi

though earlier in the year I used these Webmin heavy slides (Webmin is featured prominently and appropriately in Skolelinux) at our eSchool Conference

http://econference.k12.hi.us/conf2004/

http://www.hosef.org/projects/eschool/eschool.rev2.eyecandy.sxi

They emphasize that Open Source Software labs provide a vendor neutral, standards-compliant learning platform that provides free software tools that can be integrated into existing curricula in order to meet or exceed NCLB Mandates. I draw attention to the job creating potential, the economic development opportunities, and the education innovation and entrepreneurship opportunities (ala Bill Kendrick and his Tux* Suite).

I think that in the future I will not show screen shots of the programs but instead actually launch them. At any rate, I stop halfway through and explain that this is all great. Now all we have to do is to use this free software and install it on the computers we have at our schools, or we can just get new ones with the money we can save on software. Problem is, there aren’t any or many computers in place already, and there is really not money to be saved and then spent for new ones.

Here begins the magical pitch. I ask, ‘What if I could show you how to extend the resources of existing computers and turn previously discarded computers into fully functional workstations?’

Puzzlement.

Out of my bag comes the switch. Out of my bag comes two network cables. I explain that just as your cable box gets its programs through a high-speed cable, the version of Linux that we promote for schools enables a central server to power previously discarded computers with the speed of today’s supercomputer.

Next comes the magical Dell Box. Seen here already naked

http://www.hosef.org/gallery/exhibitions/dscf0251

its case cover is removed by pressing two buttons, its cd and floppy are quickly released, and I can hold this up and show that, hard drive free, it looks like and borders on being trash.

While removing the parts I explain that this method of setting up a computer lab enables the school to use either computers that it currently refuses from the community for being too slow or computers that HOSEF can donate to it to create a complete computer lab. I plug in the peripherals, I plug it into the switch, I plug the switch into the server, and I plug the overhead into the client. 30 seconds later I callously pick up the booted client and say that this junk is now treasure.

I log in, and I complete the presentation from there. I explain how using these components from NewEgg

http://secure.newegg.com/app/WishR.asp?ID=904498

and donated computers from HOSEF we were able to set up a 30-client computer lab at Enchanted Lake Elementary that cost the school 3344.17

http://www.hosef.org/gallery/enchanted-lake

and that was written about here

http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2004/Sep/16/ln/ln21a.html

Incidentally, our new build list is now this one:

http://secure.newegg.com/app/WishR.asp?ID=1031978

So, I now have the audience enthralled and interested. This is where we have a lot of strength because we already have a laundry list of DOE schools running Linux that we can refer them to. One of those is an Adult School where we have donated a lab and now hold weekly workshops and classes, for free, as a community service. By partnering with the Honolulu Community College (heavily Debian based for core network services) we are able to store hundreds of ready to roll clients.

This is also where we as a community are most exposed. We still don’t have out of the box documentation and curricula to make this immediately valuable. The Skolelinux folks have written a bunch of great documentation and simplified the install as much as possible, just as the K12LTSP folks have. The fact is, though, without national support, without a backbone of easily attained documentation, we are vulnerable. I have to no avail implored IBM, Novell, and HP to get on board with this tremendous opportunity to sell software, support, and hardware.

I end the presentation by explaining that we by no means promote the rip and replace philosophy for diffusing this OSS innovation. If a school is comfortable with and well-served by a proprietary application, it should be left alone. We do emphasize, though, that there are OSS alternatives, as we all know, to many name-brand apps that are worth considering. We propose that Linux labs be used as the workhorse and if there is money leftover to spend that it be used for support, training, and that delicious Apple hardware so good for multimedia education.

That is how we approach it. I could say so, so much more, but I’ll save it for other threads. If we can serve as a reference, or if our DOE success is of value to you, please exploit us. Below my signature are some links to other press. Soon, very soon, two one-hour videos will be put online from my TV appearances on a DOE program in which I install and demonstrate the K12LTSP on live TV. Hosted by a seasoned teacher, he asks all the right questions, and I hope that once online this will be a valuable resource for all of us.

with aloha

–scott

– R. Scott Belford Founder/Director The Hawaii Open Source Education Foundation PO Box 392 Kailua, HI 96734 808.689.6518 phone/fax scott@hosef.org

The original Chandler vision:
○ Open Source personal Information Manager.
○ Email, Calendar, contact tasks, free form items.
○ Easy sharing and collaboration.
○ Platform independent.
○ First conceved as PC client with peer-to-peer networking.
○ Westwood version of Chandler specifically for higher education.

Drivers:
○ Higher Education Calendar requirements not being met by commercial vendors.
○ High cost of existing solutions.
○ Desire to move from proprietary lock-in towards open standards based software.

Requirements:
○ Support large user base – 10K plus. Centralized storage requirements. Nomadic access requirements.
○ Security very important.
○ Integration: IMAP, LDAP, Blackberry…

Funding and Process:
○ Mellon Foundation, 1.5M
○ 25 Schools at $50K each.
○ Westwood Advisory council for all members.

Assessment:
○ Accomplishment is at least a year late. Stakeholders are cautiously optamistic.
○ Ambition has a price. Simultaneious effert to innovate in the front end and the back end is difficult.
○ Cross platform delivery is hard.
○ Dependence on other open source projects of different maturity is also difficult. They have had to do some work on other open source project they depend upon to make them work better for the Chandler project.
○ Major change in network architecture from P2P to WebDAV…

Sakai
○ A course management system for campuses, as well as a workflow engine.
○ Goals: cost savings, standardization, model for future.
○ 50 schools so far as partners.

EduCore
○ proposal by Ira Fuchs at Mellon Foundation
○ Coordination of development, distribution, and maintenance of key academic and administrative softrware functions.
○ 1000 universities of $5000 to $25000 per annum.
○ Why EduCore? Institutions scratching their own itches…

How is Open Source Special?
○ Means many different things to different people.
○ Decentralized & transparent means of producing software.
○ Over time the support costs should be a lot lower… but it is not pixie dust.

What Open Source Needs to Succeed:
○ Technical infrastructure.
○ Community infrastructre:
○ formal governance
○ licencing
○ clear values and principles
○ pratices which integrate principles by using tools
○ Where the rubber hits the road:
○ New participants and projects; how easy for new people to start to contribute.
○ Decision-making process perceived as being fair.

Chandler / Westwood: Progress in Open-Source collaboration
· Right now at 0.4 release
· Goal to make something that is experimentally useable
· Wiki page http://wiki.osafoundation.org/bin/view/?Chandler/ZerPointFourPlanning – release date: Oct 26, 2004
· Initial functionality: email, calendar, tasks & contacts
· Elementary sharing: share calendar and contacts
· Next major release – 0.5 – individual and collaborative calendaring tasks.
· Killble release – end of 2005: target early adopters
· Campus Release: 2006-2007

Functional Requirements:
· Synchronize Calendars
○ View other calendars offline
○ Add events to shared calendars
○ Discuss avalability
· Share / synchronize contacts, tasks, email
· Sharing “circle” allowed read/write access.
· Sharing should be available > 90% of the time
· Using Email and webdav to share calendaring.
· On the server, each user will have a directory: Home Dir -> shared calendar, shared tools
· Sharing via webdav solves the offline use issue; proven, deployed, open technology.

Things we learned:
· Under estimated the cost of ambition
· Cross plat from and rich clients are hard
· Build and integration work is non-trivial.

Future work
· Add support for Calendaring Standards: CalDav, iCalendar, more messaging options

CalDAV
· Standard for HTTP calendar access
· Standard for WebDAV calendar authoring
· Support publishing as well as sharing (publishing concert dates, culb events)
· Support scheduling? Requirement for corporate calendaring