Education Case Study: GNU/Linux and technology for diskless workstation using LTSP
Kannur District
Kerala
India
Grade Range:
High School
Website
Submitted by:
Sujeevan Pullanhiotan
Email: sujeevan_p
rediffmail.comHow things got started...
School Children of Government schools in Kannur ,Kerala now have access to their own computer education facilities running on GNU/Linux operating system packed with the latest GNU free softwares. The introduction of computer education facilities in large number of schools in Kannur, Kerala was one of the prime development project initiated by the Member of Parliament (MP) from Kannur along with the district administration authorities. As a part of constituency development program, the project was supported by local administration and the money for computer resource came from MP fund. Using GNU/Linux and disk-less workstation network in schools, a substantial amount of money could be saved and hence large number of computer facilities could be setup benefiting more number of schools.
Why Free Software?
It offered the best cost effective solution. GNU/Linux meets all the requirements for students.Setting up a computer lab in school using LTSP network cost less, is easy to setup and maintain. Not much demanding on hardware upgrades,more stable and reliable operating system and long term sustainability. Lots of free/open source applications are available on GNU/Linux. By using LTSP, maintenances and administration is easier as there is only one server to be maintained. Moreover, the students have access to the source code for developing their own projects.
The plan...
We used the LTSP server and thin clients. The state owned technology enterprise unit Keltron provided all the hardware infrastructure to schools. The software solutions based on GNU/Linux and technology for diskless workstation using LTSP ( Linux Terminal Server Project) server and ether-boot was carried out by Swathantra Software Solutions & Support, Kannur. RedHat 8.0 distribution was used and configured for setting up LTSP server.The LTSP server is a Pentium IV machine with CD-ROM drive and hard disk. The disk-less workstations are of Intel celeron machine without any hard drive and cdrom drive. Since project involved setting up installation on new hardware starting from scratch, the procedure was a bit simpler. All the machines, video cards, network cards, hubs, and other accessories were of identical type. This reduced the complexity of the setup to a minimum. Making the setup working on one server was good enough and this configuration could be copied to other machines. To boot disk-less workstations from remote server, ether-boot (www.etherboot.org) was deployed. Boot image downloaded from the site rom-o-matic.net was burnt into the ROM chip of each and every Network Interface Card (NIC). After the successful testing , all the machines were sent to the schools. To begin with, each school have one server and 3-5 disk-less workstations. Local network was setup using standard hub and cables. A custom made RedHat 8.0 installation is done inside the server and LTSP & DHCPD configured to use dynamic IP for the network. In order to make X- window load much faster than the default GNOME or KDE , the thin window -manger "icewm" is installed on all the server. Icewm is configured with custom menu and selected applications. The other installed GNU software package include, Openoffice, multimedia, Internet applications , programming tools and many applets for educational use( physics, chemistry,maths etc.). A custom made single CD (GNU Utilities for Education) is used for setting up the installation fast and simpler.
Evaluation...
Project implementation has been very successful.Everything worked as expected and is running smoothly. The new setup has been well accepted by teachers and students. After providing basic training on how to use GNU/Linux based system, the teachers have been making smooth transition to GNU/Linux syystem.The initial response of the teaching community is very much encouraging to accept GNU/Linux in education.
The Future...
The success of this project had generated good response from others. In future plan is to implement LTSP in more schools/organizations and provide the necessary help and training. Also we plan to collect and deploy many more free/opensource application suitable for teaching and learning and provide the package to all schools.
