| Stephen Gran on Thu, 7 Nov 2002 22:10:07 +0100 |
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On Thu, Nov 07, 2002 at 01:42:23PM -0500, Weissman, Gary said: > Hi, I'm new to this list so I want to say hello before I start buggin ya'll > with questions. I work for a non-profit technology assistance > provider--i.e. we are effectively technology consultants to nonprofits. > There is a TON of Microsoft software in the nonprofit world in Philadelphia. > Doesn't it make sense that nonprofits would prefer open-source > (philosophically and financially)? > > The real price of Linux, however, for these groups is an initial knowledge > investment that most people are too afraid/unwilling/don't know how to make > I'm in a position where I can help with that knowledge transition (moving > from Microsoft OSs to Linux), but I don't feel comfortable doing it until > *I* know what's going on. > > Anyway, anyone with information regarding the practicality of moving philly > non-profits to Linux (for desktop workstations, file servers) I would > appreciate any input from you. How to train people? Introduce them slowly? > Support networks? etc... Sounds like nice work you're doing. My advice is to approach each group with a view towards what works for them. If noone in the group knows anything about computers, it's just as easy to teach basic user skills (web browsing, email, word processing) in linux as it is in Windows. If there are several people who find computers arduous, but have made some strides in Windows, leave them with what they're happy with for desktop use. That said, any back-ends that need to be set up (LDAP, SQL, samba, etc) can be set up cheaper and more securely in linux than under Windows, and my personal feeling is that groups would be better served by something unlikely to crash mysteriously than something that is. The amount of maintenance for a well set up server is minimal, so if you don't (or they don't) feel like they should admin the box directly, just stick it in a corner, and say, "leave that one running. It'll be fine." If you see security advisories, or you otherwise have a need to do some admin work on that box, just ssh in and repair/upgrade. > Also, my tech question for the day: I'm running the only linux box in my > building. It's an IBM pentium 3 thinkpad with Mandrake 9.0. I've set up > the ssh daemon and I'm trying to setup new user accounts so my colleagues > can log in and play around with the command line to get a feel for it. Only > problem is, I get this message when I try to add a new user: > > vipw lockfile (/etc/ptmp) is present! > > I've tried changing the name of this file to make it "not present" but the > file is then recreated. Any suggestions? Don't use Mandrake myself, but /etc/ptmp is the the temporary copy of /etc/passwd (IIRC) created when ever modification needs to be done to system accounts (adding users, modifying passwords). It should be removed when the process exits, but apparently some process left it laying around. When the new process to modify system accounts starts up, it sees this, and thinks something else is currently modifying system accounts, and exits with an error. Move the file aside (cp to /root or something) and try again. Do you still get this error? > Thanks in advance! > > Gary -- Stephen Gran steve@lobefin.net http://www.lobefin.net/~steve Attachment:
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