ADIOS Project

-- Live Linux ADIOS CD home

ADIOS Lab Setup

• Introduction
• Requirements
• Disk Partition Configuration
• Boot Loader
• Types of Users
• Printing in Laboratory
• Downloading ADIOS in Laboratory

Introduction

The ADIOS setup software is designed to allow you as the administrator to download multiple operating systems onto workstations in your laboratory or office.  This version is relatively generic and is free for use in public departments such as schools and universities.  If you modify the source code, please inform me of any improvements so that the ADIOS package may grow in usefulness.  We have included a standard GPL copyright document to protect both everyone.

If you are currently using separate workstation laboratories for MS Windows and UNIX (Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris) then you should consider making the workstations in all laboratories available to all students with more operating systems.  That is, let the user select the environment they want to boot.  Of course you can do the same thing with a commercial package such as Ghost or Rembo but it would not be half the fun. You could also use VMware or Virtual PC to run multiple OSs on a single machine.

Requirements

1. A fast Web Server preferably Apache or Tux (with mod-SSL if restricted operations are required)
2. File transfer software such as ftp, nfs or scp to upload workstation images
3. Workstations of a similar hardware configuration
   • Fast Intel PC, network card, video card, monitor, hard disk
4. Download software such wget, installation shell and CGI scripts to implement the download
5. Linux bootable USB, CDROM or network card (supporting PXE) to copy the setup image to its own disk partition
6. Time to build one copy of each operating system you wish to run in your laboratory
7. Time to upload each operating system then download and test with Linux loader

Disk Partition Configuration

Here is an example of how you could partition the disc of the laboratory workstations.

• Partition 1    MS Windows (say at least 10GB) domain authentication service via SAMBA or LDAP or AD or ...
• Partition 2    Duplicate copy of Windows (another 10GB)
• Partition 3    Unix (remainder of Disk say at least 20GB subdivided into logical partitions) domain authentication
• Partition 4    Setup (last section of disk) has multilevel password protection - from no user access to full control

In the /var/www/html/install directory you can edit the install_part-S1 to install_part-S4 scripts and specify partition sizes.

To support MS Windows and Linux or Solaris or FreeBSD, a sample disk arrangement for a 40GB disk is as follows:

Boot Loader

The Linux Loader can be used to allow users to select an operating system, a typical GRUB prompt could be configured to let users select one of the following:

• Windows
• Linux admin
• Linux user
• Setup

Types of Users

Different levels of access can be granted depending on what end users need to perform on the workstation.  The setup software has been setup so that you can have at least three levels of privileges. 

1. no SETUP privileges
   • Can start MS Windows or Linux only as a domain authenticated user
     
2. user SETUP privileges
   • Can download another operating system such as MS Windows or Linux into a predefined partition. 
   • Reboot and select operating system to boot at the GRUB prompt.
     
3. admin SETUP privileges
   • Can upload operating system to Server

Users of the Linux operation system could be setup to multiple levels of access to the workstation.  Some students may only require to run applications others may require administrative control and others may want to develop new software to download.  Here are some suggested levels of access.

1. no ROOT access
   • without access to superuser privileges on parent
   • can start UML virtual machine which has superuser privileges
     
2. user with ROOT access
   • access to superuser privileges
   • can modify all read-write files
     
3. user with access to development environment
   • can install and build any software from source

Printing in Laboratory

This does not require remastering the ADIOS image as the file labs.tgz can be customised.  Typically printing should be setup so that users can just select the "lp" printer and if possible preview what is to be printed first. You can even print the whole screen.  Users may require some credit if you have some form of cost accounting associated with your printer.  

Downloading ADIOS in Laboratory

1. The ADIOS boot CD is configured to reinstall itself from the server onto the last partition of your workstation hard disk.
2. It uses a simple Perl CGI script to process the workstation requests called install.cgi (located at /var/www/cgi-bin/install.cgi in the ADIOS ISO)  
3. A simple browser program to reads and execute scripts from the web server to write operating systems onto disk partitions.
4. A set of shell scripts (located at /var/www/html/install/scripts on tha ADIOS ISO) to transfer operating systems from the web server to your workstation
5. A free operating systems for download such as Linux

This software distribution is free, but the author would like to know who is using the software. 
Please email n.richter@cqu.edu.au for more information.