Re: Linux in the Olivet Community Schools

[Adam Tauno Williams <awilliam@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>While my main responsibility in the OCS is maintaining the constantly
>changing web pages for the Olivet Middle School, I try to give advice on the
>LINUX server through which internet connections are made to the outside world for
>users (primarliy teachers) on an Novell net.  I have no account on this server 
>and don't know much about such network arrangements. I am concerned that the 
>non-LINUX, non-UNIX, relatively amateurish managers of the system are about 
>to give up on the LINUX server for what I am sure are inappropriate reasons.
>The network connection is peculiar in that Olivet Community schools do
>NOT have an internet connection themselves at all but use a line to the local
>Regional Education Management Center (?), REMC1.k12.mi.us.  REMC12 has 
>olivetschools.org aliased to REMC12.k12.mi.us/olivet/ where a OCS sheet has 

Nothing peculiar about that,  many larger operations are arranged that way
(centralized Internet connection).  What is an OCS sheet?

>links to pages on the LINUX server at OCS.  The problem is that regularly 
>users have no access to the Olivet Middle School (& other linked pages from 
>the olivet page) AND their attempts to use mail.olivetschools.org from outside 
>the local network fail.  Similarly, I cannot use FTP into the server
>to update the middle school pages when this problem holds.  You can see
>the problem if it persists by looking at the URL:  olivetschools.org.
 
It should be very easy to test.  Document the IP address of the mentioned
hosts with "nslookup" (DOS or Win??/2000).  Then when you can't connect
simply do a "ping {address}" (for example: ping 192.168.1.2), starting with
what you think is the closeset host (the Linux box?) involved in the 
connection.... when the ping stops working you've found the broken link.
If you can ping all the hosts (BY ADDRESS NOT NAME) then it is a DNS
problem (which it doesn't sound like,  why whould a DNS problem by
intermittant?).  Try typing the IP of the host in as your URL instead of
the name and see if you get a page.

>A local consultant who used to be the IT specialist at OCS
>(and before that a teacher of Computer Science in the OCS high school)
>who does NOT know LINUX (the system was set up by someone who left the system)
>was able to fix the problem a week or so ago by removing a series of error 
>messages sent to the postmaster (namely that consultant) who only looks at 
>the system when there is a problem.  The current IT persons believe the
>problem is in a local DNS address but I doubt that.   Because of the
>peculiar hardware intermediate access to the internet, the problem could be 
>at either end of that hardware line (REMC12 or OCS).

What type of line is it?  Analog, Frame, T1, 64k leased, ISDN.....  

ALL TYPES OF SYSTEMS NEED THEIR MESSAGE LOGS REVIEWED ON A FREQUENT
BASIS.
 
>Now:  How can I keep this LINUX server functioning smoothly so that it
>is not dumped for some expensive proprietary software?  Does the LINUX 
>server manager need to check the system for message regularly?  

YES, just like the Novell and NT admin has to.  You could easily set it up
to mail you the message logs, etc...

>Is there a way I can be given permission to access the server remotely 
>regularly to check for problems?  

If you can politically, the technology is not a problem.  You can use
telnet, rlogin, ssh, etc.... to access the box remotely.  Which is
easiest depends on the boxes vintage.

>How do I determine where the problem lies?

Try the above with ping and nslookup,  it's a good start and you don't need 
access to the box to do it.