Hi Franklin,I am one of the Debian Edu developers and also someone you deploys Debian Edu at local schools and customizes it.
On So 23 Feb 2014 13:09:21 CET, Franklin Weng wrote:
Yesterday we have a test using Skolelinux Wheezy in a real computer classroom. The performance of diskless workstation is quite good and we're very satisfied with it. Now the next step we'd like to customize it for our needs, therefore we can promote it to schools in Taiwan.
:-)
I've read some documents of debian edu, including the architecture, the contribute development page, ... etc. I also checkout the skolelinux trunk from svn. However I didn't find out how to customize the debian-edu wheezy iso file.
Of course, you can try to rebuild the Debian Edu ISOs, but for customizing Debian Edu I disrecommend that approach. The approach I recommend is:
o Install Debian Edu as it is officially distributed o Tweak the installation afterwardsThe tweaking we in our local team do via a set of packages [1] that act as an overlay on top of the Debian Edu machines. My personal goal is to integrated everything that makes sense into the Debian Edu packages (debian-edu-config mainly).
Everything that cannot be tweaked by a .deb package gets tweaked either manually or via tools like cfengine (or puppet or ...).
1. Change the installer: When installing there are some garbage characters showing traditional Chinese. (Like the profile Roaming Workstation) Also, maybe the background image of the installer.
Please do this together with Debian Edu upstream. Checkout the packages debian-edu-config debian-edu-installAnd figure out (not so easy!) where your patches have to go. Once you have that file bugs [2] against that same Debian package.
2. PxE boot menu: I'd like to change the default option from "Booting from local harddrive" to "Diskless workstation". Also I'd like to translate it into Chinese.
We implement this in our own package (itzks-systems-disklserver). The package contains a tarball that we copy over the default configuration.
3. System IP address: The default ip address is 10.0.2.2/8 if I install a main server along with LTSP server. However, this IP setting caused some problem in our network environment. There are two network interfaces in our main server. One is for LAN connecting to all the client machines, and the other is connecting to the upper level network (which connected directly to the administration workstation to the City's Ministry of Education. The IP network of the latter interface was set to 10.135.0.0/16. However, if I change the IP of the former interface, it would cause LDAP failed to authenticate, hence unable to login. I'd like to know how to change this IP settings to, maybe 172.16.*, which was seldom used here.
There is a script in debian-edu-config [3] that can do the subnet change of the mainserver.
4. I'd like to change the desktop background image, the menu item, the pre-installed applications, ... etc. If I can change this, I can easily merge the ezgo system which we're working on into skolelinux.
Look at the package debian-edu-artwork and fork it for your needs.
Currently I'd like to branch skolelinux, mainly for experiment. I'd also like to discuss more technique detail with the developers of skolelinux. as well as the maintainer team of many school's network. Could any one please help me with the issues above, and tell me how to contact with the maintainer / developers of skolelinux?
My suggestion is: don't branch to much. You will not be allowed too change much about Debian Edu wheezy when joining the development team of Skolelinux, but you/we have all freedom for Debian Edu jessie. Let's join forces for the next release (whose development will be based on Git rather than SVN actually).
Thank you very much.
Please show up on IRC (irc.debian.org) and join the #debian-edu channel. Ping me there (nick: sunweaver).
Greets, Mike [1] http://code.it-zukunft-schule.de/gitweb?p=itzks-systems.git;a=summary [2] https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs [3] /usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/subnet-change -- DAS-NETZWERKTEAM mike gabriel, herweg 7, 24357 fleckeby fon: +49 (1520) 1976 148 GnuPG Key ID 0x25771B31 mail: mike.gabriel@das-netzwerkteam.de, http://das-netzwerkteam.de freeBusy: https://mail.das-netzwerkteam.de/freebusy/m.gabriel%40das-netzwerkteam.de.xfb
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