Technical Coordinator's Report Mar 2006

Technical Coordinator's Report

Some changes made to the distro over the last month.

1/ To the current Distro we fixed the .dmrc problem in Root, we had already done this in User, but forgot Root :(  , anyway fixed now, also we updated cupsys-drivers-gimpprint to cupsys-drivers-gutenprint v5 for the latest drivers

2/ Joe and I did an upgrade of the current distro to debian unstable, which upgraded most of the applications on the system. Short list of upgrades; KDE 3.3.3 to 3.5.1, OOo1.1.3 to 2.0.1, Firefox 1.07 to 1.5, Thunderbird 1.02 to 1.07, Gimp 2.08 to 2.10 and various other improvements, we also upgraded the kernel to 2.6.12 without Supermount. This is being tested atm as replacement for current distro.

We are still trying to get this system to Automount USB Devices, but its all working fine.

3/ I have completed an Kubuntu based distro as well, this has fully functioning automounting, and has been tweaked to be more like our present distro, though for various reasons I had to stick with a KDE 3.4.3 frontend and OOo1.1.5. Again this is ready for testing as replacement for current system

4/ CMS network, as noted in the User Support Report this system may need upgrading to a more serious server setup, Initial request was for a file storage computer, but because of various issues  it may need upgrading. Marcus has made some suggestions how to do this, and we are hoping to have a meeting later this week to discuss his various plans.

5/ Darebin Thin Client Networks. Kylie upgraded various things at the Agg St facility, inc Cracking the Root password using a Knoppix CD :)  and setting up new  ISP Details.  While Ed has been busy at the  Holmes St Facility  fixing various problems with Floppy Drives, Dialup Connection and general Sabotage by some Admin People, he has added a script that checks to see if the modem has dropped its connection and redails automagically, except between 10pm and 8am ( So they don't waste money reconnecting when no one is using it), Ed has also been monitoring the system remotely to see how often people use the system and late they use it.

Thats about it

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