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Re: WLUS 1.2-27



torsdag 22. april 2004, 17:31, skrev Ralf:
> Last time I tried it, there were some, say, flaws, that made us going
> back to plain webmin (2 weeks ago!) By then, it was not possible to
> select the usernames after one's own taste, and one had to use an
> administrator account different from root, to name only two obsticles
> I remember of.

You can select your own user-names through the create-users-from-file 
option when pressing "create user(s)"-button. The file-format is easy 
to handle. 

There are many reasons behind limiting the posibility to make your own 
user-names. The main reason is automation. The teacher at a school has 
2-4 hours a week to support and operate a Skolelinux-network with 320 
pupils and teachers. With 150-200 hours a year to operate 150-1200 user 
accounts, they don't need more complexity. They realy need less, or no 
complexity at all. 

Bear in mind that the ICT-person at a school have no means to get more 
time to operate the system. Budget cuts in public sector in Norway are 
huge, and the last 2 years the headmasters has reduced the number of 
teachers with 15-20%. To handle a deficit on 157.004.830 EURO the 
planed reductionis about 2500-4000 employees in public sector  this 
year. 

There is arround 3200 schools in Norway, and the schools will be 
affected from even more budget cuts. The Ministry of Education and 
Research does also have  a plan to reduce the numbers of teachers in 
Norwegian education. Also the teachers got a historical increase in 
wages 2-3 years ago on the average of 6038 EURO for every teacher. The 
budget cuts, the political decision to reduce the amount of teachers, 
and the historical increase in teachers wages 2-3 years ago has an 
tremendous effect on how to operate computer-systems in the schools. 
All this is happening when the Ministry expects that every pupil shall 
do their exams with Internet and ICT-tools: 

http://odin.dep.no/ufd/engelsk/publ/veiledninger/014081-990077/index-dok000-b-n-a.html

The WLUS is ment to be used for teachers with no privous experience with 
LDAP or Active Directory. This application is made for managing 
hundreds or thousends of users in a medium sized or large nettwork. 
It's distributed, and handles a plug-and-play extension of a 
Skolelinux-nettwork: 

http://developer.skolelinux.no/arkitektur/arkitektur.html.en

Reports from a lot of schools that expands it's network is that the 
Webmin-LDAP-Simple (WLS) works, and get the job done. The 
Webmin-LDAP-User-Simple (WLUS) will work even better :-). This 
application is our fourth try to get this right. We have developed it 
with guidelines from a lot of teachers and ICT-operators. WLS is in use 
in over 100 schools in Norway. 

http://developer.skolelinux.no/info/studentgrupper/2003_NITH_brukeradmin/sluttfase/brukermanual.htm
http://developer.skolelinux.no/info/studentgrupper/2003_NITH_brukeradmin/utdypningsfase/aktivitetsdiagram.html

The ACL-functionality (Access Control List) is not on place for 
syncronizing users  privilege with Webmin and Skolelinux. To handle the 
3 different password in UNIX (on the different servers), Webmin and 
LDAP, you have to follow the test-case 006 (follow the link [1]). Some 
of this is explained in the new day-to-day opration guide for 
Skolelinux from Klaus Ade (it's still in Norwegian[2]): 

[1] http://developer.skolelinux.no/testing/wlus/006_admin_passwd.txt
[2] http://developer.skolelinux.no/~klaus/notater/c2054.html

So to be short. No, we want change the functionality in WLUS. But you 
can do it yourself. Skolelinux is a do-o-cratic managed project were 
they who wants something, can do their changes as they like. You have 
the freedom to do it your self :-). 

Our goal is to help over 100 schools that voluntarly using Skolelinux. 
The respons from the ICT-staf is to _reduce_ complexity as much as 
posible. Feedback from a lot of people shows us that we are on the 
right track. 

http://www.skolelinux.no/testskoler/map/skolelinux-norway.png

- Knut Yrvin
The project manager Skolelinux Norway



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