martyz@idui1.csrv.uidaho.edu (Marty Zimmerman) (06/17/91)
Any tips for setting up Macs (LCs in this case) on a network in a student lab? As far as I know, there is no way to have them boot from the network, but I would like to convice them to read their system folder from the net to speed things up a bit. Any advice in this area will be greatly appreciated. The hardware: 10 Mac LCs with Ethertalk adaptors. The server is currently a Mac IIfx, but will eventually be a Mac IIci. We can use either System 7 or 6.0.7. -------------------------- Marty Zimmerman <martyz@idui1.csrv.uidaho.edu> Computer Services <martyz@idui1.bitnet> University of Idaho Moscow, ID USA
datta@vacs.uwp.edu (David Datta) (06/18/91)
In article <1991Jun17.165139.575@groucho> martyz@idui1.csrv.uidaho.edu (Marty Zimmerman) writes: >Any tips for setting up Macs (LCs in this case) on a network in a student lab? Have fun, I installed a lab full of MAC SE30s last year, here is the results: You cannot make the mac boot from the network or use system files from the network. I have bitched and moaned to our apple reps and they finally told me, "you can't do it, period." (after much hemming and hawing.) Be ready to re-install about 2-3 machines a week unless you hide and rename the system folder. If the lab is in a public access area, things will be erased on a regular basis. Lock all of the files in the system folder that you don't want messed up, (I.E. EVERYTHING) put gatekeeper and gatekeeper aid on all of them and lock out the disable buttons. Modify the control panel so that none of the settings will work. (Leave the buttons for the values you want things to be active so you can re-set them if someone boots from their own floppy.) Don't install neat things such as kolor. You will find that wise-ass students like to change EVERYTHING to the same color so you can't see anything. Many packages that advertise "networkable" aren't, ask for a preview copy before buying 10 licences for your favorite package. If you keep software on the hard disks, be prepared to have it erased by students who are trying to install their favorite game that "won't fit" because of the stuff you installed. Keep a master backup of the hard disks, it is usually easier to configure everything the same and if someone messes something up, to erase the hard drive and start over. We keep an image of the hard drives on the server (in a folder that users cannot access) and boot the machine with a clean system disk when things get messed up. Be VERY aware about software incompatibilities, in the last few months, we have had students installing Sound Master and other things that eat up the RAM and make other programs not work. (Also it is recommended to turn off RAM cache from the control panel, some packages don't work with it.) -- -Dave datta@vacs.uwp.edu. So, are there any words that rhyme with orange?
Brian.V.Hughes@dartmouth.edu (Brian V. Hughes) (06/18/91)
In article <1991Jun17.165139.575@groucho> martyz@idui1.csrv.uidaho.edu (Marty Zimmerman) writes: > Any tips for setting up Macs (LCs in this case) on a network in a student lab? > > As far as I know, there is no way to have them boot from the network, but I > would like to convice them to read their system folder from the net to speed > things up a bit. Any advice in this area will be greatly appreciated. This would be a great idea, but I don't believe that it is possible. I worked for a while in a lab pretty much as you are descibing, but we had one of every type of Mac on our network, which is a subset of the main network here at Dartmouth. We had one major piece of software that saved us coutless ours of having to deal with problem users scewing up the hard drives; FILEGUARD. Purchace a 10 pack for the lab and install it on each of the LC's. It will allow you to completely control the access that the students will have to every piece of the hard drive including the system folder. It is an absolute lifesaver. I also strongly recommend, as did someone else, that you keep a backup of the main contents of the hard drives in a locked folder on the server. > The hardware: 10 Mac LCs with Ethertalk adaptors. The server is currently a > Mac IIfx, but will eventually be a Mac IIci. We can use either System 7 or > 6.0.7. The server probably won't really matter, as long as you have sufficient disk space for everything that you want to keep there. If you have the Ram for the LCs I would recommend using Sys 7.0. It will allow you to customize other aspects that you can't do as easily in 6.0.7. For instance you could set up a standard list of aliases that access folders, applications and documents on the server and install them in the apple menu folder of each of the LCs. This is the direction that I would go in if I were starting from the ground level as you are. Later. -Hades Brian Hughes hades@Eleazar.Dartmouth.Edu Dartmouth Medical School - Computer Information Specialist
rand@merrimack.edu (06/19/91)
In article <1991Jun17.165139.575@groucho>, martyz@idui1.csrv.uidaho.edu (Marty Zimmerman) writes: > Any tips for setting up Macs (LCs in this case) on a network in a student lab? There are two things on the net you might want to look at. InitShare--lets you stick a bunch of inits a a fileserver and have them run by those macs with the InitShare init. VolumeImage--lets you keep a mirror of what you want a disk to look like on a file server. Run VolumeImage and it does a DIFF, only refreshing stuff that's been changed deleted or moved. pretty flexible...
ramdas@buitc.bu.edu (Ramdas Rao) (06/19/91)
In article <1991Jun17.165139.575@groucho>, martyz@idui1.csrv.uidaho.edu (Marty Zimmerman) writes: |> Any tips for setting up Macs (LCs in this case) on a network in a student lab? |> |> As far as I know, there is no way to have them boot from the network, but I |> would like to convice them to read their system folder from the net to speed |> things up a bit. Any advice in this area will be greatly appreciated. |> A couple of months ago, we did some research into setting up a public access Mac lab. We also were interested in having the Macs boot over the network. What we found was a product called, BootToob. Here's the info on the company. Mauswerks 1242 Neil Ave., Suite J Columbus, OH 43201 (614) 294-7300 What this product requires is that client Macs be Mac IIs (or one of the new Macs with a NuBus adapter) with a NuBus Ethernet card and at least 2 MB RAM. For the server, any Mac or UNIX machine with BOOTP will do. A BOOTP init for the Mac is provided. The product is a firmware and software solution. For each copy (I believe the list price/copy is $139), you get a ROM chip and software. The ROM replaces the ROM on Apple and Asante Ethernet cards. An included application is used to configure the Mac for remote booting as well as configuring the server on the net. BOOTP is used for the booting process, so, you could have a UNIX machine be the server. What the client Mac boots is an image of the system (and applications, if configured so). It is recommended that you limit this image to below 2MB. The RAM on the client becomes a RAM disk and the system is run from there. So, whatever the difference is between the RAM in the client and the image size is the amount of memory available to the user's application(s). In our implementation, we decided that the image would contain only the System s/w and the applications would be accessed from an AppleShare volume (either by inits in the System folder or manually by users). This made the image size about 1 MB in size. The clients took an average of 2 minutes to load this image and boot up. While the Lab has not as yet been set up, we decided that this would be the option we would choose instead of having local hard drives with various options for protection. |> The hardware: 10 Mac LCs with Ethertalk adaptors. The server is currently a |> Mac IIfx, but will eventually be a Mac IIci. We can use either System 7 or |> 6.0.7. |> |> -------------------------- |> Marty Zimmerman <martyz@idui1.csrv.uidaho.edu> |> Computer Services <martyz@idui1.bitnet> |> University of Idaho |> Moscow, ID USA Once the client has booted, the Ethernet card is available to applications as a standard interface. This means that things like, NCSA telnet can use the Ethernet interface. So far, it sounds like everything you want right? Well, there are a couple of small catches, but, we didn't think they were big enough to prevent our use of this product. One of the problems, as mentioned earlier, is that it takes the client about 2 minutes to boot up. There was mixed opinions about this. A second problem is that the configured boot information can be altered if the Mac is booted from a floppy disk with a System file on it. This floppy would have to be inserted before the client booted from the server. What happens is that the Mac boots off the floppy and changes the PRAM to boot from the floppy by default instead of the network interface card. The easy (easier than restoring a corrupted disk, anyways) fix is to restore the PRAM to boot from the network interface card. This process takes about 45 seconds. Another advantage is that you could have as many System images as clients to customize each client or one image for all clients. It would be attractive to have one image that all Macs in a public access lab boot, so, a user can always restore the default environment from any Mac by simply rebooting. Hope this is of some use. ---Ram Das Rao Information Technology Boston University