Re: Linux in the Olivet Community Schools

["Ralph M. Deal" <deal@xxxxxxxx>]

Thanks Adam, for the propmpt response.

On Thu, 8 Mar 2001, Adam Tauno Williams wrote:

> >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?

Sorry about that - page, not 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.

Unfortunately, I cannot 'look at' that URL since DNSs don't recognize it
at
this point.

> It should be very easy to test.  Document the IP address of the mentioned
> hosts with "nslookup" (DOS or Win??/2000).  

nslookup did indeed give me the IP adadress of server.remc12.k12.mi.us but 
my attempts to get more information on the site from nslookup always led
to the error message: 
*** can't list domain 204.38.209.124: Unspecified error

The IP address for "olivetschools.org" when it was working was 
198.108.181.2, but now I can't check it ...
NOW that is a legitimate IP address.  Must have just fixed it.
I can now use ftp to get to the site by either IP address or name.
This is quite frustrating!  Since there is now no problem apparently,
I may have trouble tracing the earlier fault.  Presumably some did
something at one end or the other.  It cleared close to 5PM.  Could it
have been some equipment being shut down or the load going down?

> 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.

Since I can now ping both the remc site and the olivetschools"site", I
have nothing to learn from pinging, right?

...
> >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.....  

Don't know and can't find out now but shall enquire.
 
> ALL TYPES OF SYSTEMS NEED THEIR MESSAGE LOGS REVIEWED ON A FREQUENT
> BASIS.

I'll discuss that with the current system managers.

> >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...

Great idea.  I'll ask.

> >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.
 
It runs of RH 6.2 I believe.

Very helpful suggestions.  Too bad the situation changed while I was
looking at it.

	Thanks,   Ralph   deal@kzoo.edu