Linux, Internet Cafe, Haiti...

[William Park]

On Sun, Jan 08, 2006 at 07:54:08PM -0500, Jamon Camisso wrote:
> I'm going to be setting up an internet cafe in Haiti next month. The 
> project is completely voluntary and I am almost solely responsible for 
> the computery bits.
> 
> I checked out all the donated hardware for the cafe today and found that 
> there are about 10 working computers, ranging from 486dx's to 300mhz 
> celerons. The machine with the most ram I could find had 64mb. With this 
> in mind, my immediate thought is to use a terminal based system and 
> simply purchase a decent server to run the whole operation.
> 
> Most of the computers came from the Canadian Government, with NT4.0 and 
> the dx'es from the University of Ottawa with Novell something or other 
> and Win3.1. All the computers have network cards, some with co-ax and 
> others not. All are ISA of course.
> 
> My first question then: how hard will it be to get the computers to boot 
> from the network and how much (if at all) will their aging components 
> affect both their access to the server and operations on the server itself?

I doubt such vintage machines can do PXE boot.  Since they won't have
USB ports, even USB boot is out of question.  Your options are
    - floppy boot.  That is, load the kernel from floppy, then do
      NFS-root, then do thin-client.
    - harddisk boot.  Install bare minimum Linux on local harddisk, and
      boot from that.  Once booted, then do thin-client.

Since you're setting up "Internet browsers", you really don't need
central server at all.  Just install bare minimum Linux needed for
Firefox.

> 
> My second question, which arises in part from the first: which distro(s) 
> would work well in this proposed environment? My immediate thought is 
> something like Fedora, SuSE, Ubuntu etc. My reasons for this are in part 
> due to the fact that I'll be remotely checking in and troubleshooting 
> and am familiar with those three distros, both as server and as desktop.

Just use your favourite one.  But, minimum install.

> 
> My third question: what type of network would work best? The cafe will 
> have a satellite connection and will be carrying multiple voip 
> connections for international calls. For most users speed will not be 
> much of an issue since in the area I'll be working (just outside 
> Jacmel), there is absolutely no internet or international call 
> capability, so anything is better than nothing.

Last time I used 10base2 (co-ax), it was okey.  You say, "some with coax
and other not".  Then, the cheapest way is to bring bunch of cheap
network cards with you.  FactoryDirect flyer says Netgear 10/100 $9.98
for 2.  I'm sure you can them cheaper.

> 
> I'll try to make it out to the meeting this week? if anyone feels like 
> giving me any advice or pointers.
> 
> Thanks for any thoughts,
> 
> Jamon
> --
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-- 
William Park <opengeometry-FFYn/CNdgSA at public.gmane.org>, Toronto, Canada
ThinFlash: Linux thin-client on USB key (flash) drive
	   http://home.eol.ca/~parkw/thinflash.html
BashDiff: Super Bash shell
	  http://freshmeat.net/projects/bashdiff/
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml