cerebrum debian-edu/skolelinux integration
Hi!
These are the meeting minutes to the telephone meeting of
Mathias Meisfjordskar, Petter Reinholdtsen and Andreas Schuldei
on the 23th of july 2004 regarding the integration of cerebrum
into debian-edu (aka skolelinux).
Requirements:
- Cerebrum should store persons, persongroups and machines (rooms
will not be managed as special entities, but will be managed in
netgroups)
- it will export to ldap (userdatabase, netgroups, to be used by
glibc pam/nss) and Mailsystem (exim).
- automatic account creation
- automatic account movements between groups, servers, partitions
(use scripts from UiO, will need some adjustments)
- manage (specify and update) printer quotas.
- high speed for data transfer of long lists from cerebrum to the
GUI, and from changed data to the directories (aka "update
propagation"):
- incremental update to ldap are *fast* (this should take care
of fast update propagation)
- mulit-threading to the database is coming (should provide
good responsiveness for the data transfers to the GUI))
Nice to have features (more or less urgent)
- store machine groups (even printers) in cerebrum, too
- scripts for controlled account destruction (see
process_changes, changelog scanning), hooks for this exist
- push back changed passwords and other data from the directories
to cerebrum in an event driven way (e.g. changing Samba
attributes or changed passwords (what else?)). At UiO all
password changes are done using https://password.uio.no/, that
means directly in cerebrum, not via some directory.
- direct postgresql table manipulation? (enquiry from
Baden-Würtemberg) Data inconsistencys likely, therefore
strongly discouraged
- kerberos integration
- sending mail to mailing lists. We want to be able to send
emails to the user groups if this is enabled.
Status
(provided by Mathias)
- Cerebrum is in production in norwegian Universities ("Høgskolen
i Sør-Trøndelag", "Høgskolen i Agder", "UiO", "University of
Tromsø") and in Feide2Go.
<URL:http://www.uninettabc.no/?p=prosjekter&inc=p002_feidegvs.php>.
- problems in the FeideToGo project mostly politcal/money-raising
and in the structuring of information (XML ...)
- Mathias has done basic import filters, but because of the
missing structure (to be provided by the above stalling
process) courses and parents data is missing in Feide2Go
- a working Mail and ldap interface exists ( we need samba on top
of that)
- ldap mail schemas are "universal" and should just work
generally.
- export to Active Directory exist.
- Mathias will write import/export scripts for TPSys and perhaps
other existing school administrative systems.
Package Status
(provided by Andreas)
- not worthwhile to package the webinterface yet, it might be
useable around christmas
- bofhd runs, but the jobrunner went missing. :-(
- Mathias provided some basic config files (from Feide2Go) as an
easy starting point
- we need to dumb down and simplify cerebrum's userinterfaces
somewhat to not shock teachers and unsuspecting admins
Tasks
- update cerebrum package (andreas, probabtly week 31)
- upload package to sid and file RC bug to keep it out of sarge.
- xml file spec for import of person info into cerebrum
(Mathias)
- configuration (andreas et.al.)
- package currently uses python 2.3 (versus 2.2 in cvs), check
version requirements
- import/update/export scripts (export scripts are there and
require some adjustment ( Samba is missing entirely))
- documentation (Jasmine (UiO))
- what is cerebrum,
- info to prospective users how to use cerebrum (bofh/web
interface doc)
- importing / exporting to/from cerebrum - developers doc
- administration of cerebrum
- What are the german project's "Musterlösung Baden-Würtemberg"
requirements towards cerebrum?.
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