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  * On workstations with little amount of RAM the spell checker can cause OpenOffice.org to hang if the swap space is too small. Then the system administrator has to disable the spell checker on OpenOffice.org or students have to kill OpenOffice.org resulting in losing their work. Enabling at least 512 MiB swap on a 256 MiB RAM diskless workstation solves this problem and the spell checker runs smoothly.   * On workstations with little amount of RAM the spell checker can cause OpenOffice.org to hang if the swap space is too small. Then the system administrator has to disable the spell checker on OpenOffice.org or students have to kill OpenOffice.org resulting in loss of their work. Enabling at least 512 MiB swap on a 256 MiB RAM workstation solves this problem and the spell checker runs smoothly.

Requirements

There are different ways of set up a Skolelinux solution. It can be installed on just one standalone PC or a regional wide solution at many schools operated centrally. This variety of configurations makes a huge difference on how things are set up regarding network components, servers and client machines.

Hardware requirements

The purpose of the different profiles is explained in the network architecture chapter.

  • the computers running Debian Edu / Skolelinux must have either i386, amd64 or powerpc processors.
    • On powerpc, the installation media will only boot on machines of the newworld sub-architecture, which are the systems from apple with a translucent case
  • thin client (LTSP) servers need two network cards when using the default network architecture:
    • eth0 connected to the main network (10.0.2.0/23)
    • eth1 (192.168.0.0/24) serving the thin-clients
  • disk space requirements depend on profiles used, but any disk larger than 10 GiB will be sufficient for a workstation installation, 15 Gib for a thin-client server and at least 30 GiB on the main server. As usual, on the main-server it's the bigger the better.
  • thin clients can run on as low as 64 MiB RAM and 133 MHz processor, though 128 MiB RAM and somewhat faster processors are recommended.
    • for running Iceweasel/Firefox and OpenOffice.org, we recommend 12 MiB RAM at minimum.

  • for workstations or standalone PCs 450 MHz, 256 MiB RAM are recommended minimum requirements
  • for diskless workstations (also known as stateless workstations, half-thick clients or lowfat clients) 256 MiB RAM and 800 MHz are recommended minimum requirements, though 512 or 1024 MiB RAM will perform much better.
    • Swapping over the network is automatically enabled, the swap size is 32 MiB, if you need more you can tune this by editing /etc/ltsp/nbdswapd.conf on tjener to set the SIZE variable. Please tune up the swap size either locally on the pc or on the server.

    • On workstations with little amount of RAM the spell checker can cause OpenOffice.org to hang if the swap space is too small. Then the system administrator has to disable the spell checker on OpenOffice.org or students have to kill OpenOffice.org resulting in loss of their work. Enabling at least 512 MiB swap on a 256 MiB RAM workstation solves this problem and the spell checker runs smoothly.

  • Laptops should be considered like workstations.

Hardware known to work

A list of tested hardware is provided from http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Hardware/ . This list is not nearly complete :)

http://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn is an effort to document how to install, configure and use Debian on some specific hardware. Therefore potential buyers would know if that hardware is supported and owner would know how get the best out of that hardware.

An excellent database about hardware supported by Debian is online at http://kmuto.jp/debian/hcl/.

Requirements for a network setup

  • a router/gateway (IP 10.0.2.1) providing access to the internet (when using the default network architecture)
  • for the main server (10.0.2.2): this is the one single computer in the network which get's the tjener-profile installed

  • workstation(s) and/or thin client (LTSP) server(s)
  • thin clients clients

Internet router

A router/gateway, connected to the internet on the external interface and running on the IP address 10.0.2.1 on the internal interface, is needed to connect to the internet.

The router should not run a DHCP server, it can run a DNS server, though this is not needed and will not be used. (If the router runs a DHCP server you must disable the DHCP server on the main server and you will loose some features and certain documented procedures will work differently. So better disable the DHCP server on the router.)

If you are looking for a i386 based solution (so that you can reuse an old PC), we recommend IPCop or floppyfw.

If you need something for an embedded router or accesspoint we recommend using OpenWRT, though of course you can also use the original firmware. Using the original firmware is easier, using OpenWRT gives you more choices and control. Check the OpenWRT webpages for a list of supported hardware.

It is possible to use a different network setup, this is the documented procedure to do this. If you are not forced to do this by an existing network infrastructure, we recommend against doing so and recommend you stay with the default network architecture.

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