[PLUG] Swap drives or remote access for clinic or workshop

Keith Lofstrom keithl at kl-ic.com
Tue Mar 20 17:15:36 UTC 2007


> On Mon, 2007-03-19 at 09:41 -0700, Keith Lofstrom wrote:
> > PLUG has three monthly gatherings - the general meeting, advanced 
> > topics, and linux clinic.  I propose a fourth meeting, scheduled
> > as the need appears and when an organizer volunteers:
> > 
> > Special Topics Workshop
> > 
> > The special topics workshop is for installing and configuring
> > specific pieces of software.  Examples might include  VMware,
> > Mediawiki, Samba, ndiswrapper or video codecs.  The workshop would
> > follow a format that would be a blend of Advanced Topics and Linux
> > Clinic; perhaps an hour devoted to a lecture/demonstration, followed
> > by an hour of install and an hour of configuration and testing.
> > Attendees are be expected to read up in advance, look onlines for 
> > potential problems with their particular distro and setup,  and
> > download prerequisites and dependencies if possible, then bring
> > their machines and be ready to work.
> 
On Tue, Mar 20, 2007 at 12:12:30AM -0700, Michael M. wrote:
> A nice idea, though for me it has the same problem as the clinic:  no
> means of transporting a machine to the location.  I suppose one day I'll
> get a laptop, but I don't really need one now.

A problem for many, no doubt. 

If your machine is accessable over a reasonably fast VPN, we can do
almost everything that we can if your machine is on-site at the clinic
(we can bring up a desktop remotely, for example).   If your machine 
is accessable by SSH, and has yum or apt set up, we can set up a VPN.

If your machine is not accessable, perhaps we can agree on some kind
of swap tray infrastructure, so that you merely bring in the hard 
drive.  That could be your project for PLUG - researching the swap
tray options, and convincing other PLUG members and Free Geek to
use that kind of tray in the accessable machines, and buying a few
for yourself and for Free Geek.  I will be easier to convince if you
use the ViPower Parallel ATA133 tray, or alternately the InClose tray.
The ViPower trays are available at ENU, and also fairly inexpensively
by mail order, while the InClose trays are available at Frys.  The
ViPower are slightly more reliable, slightly cheaper, and have both
slide-switch and key-access enclosures, so the Free Geek machines
could be keyed.

This would be a lot of work, and might cost as much as two taxi trips
to move your hardware to one clinic day.  But it would create a
system that could be used many times, and would help a lot of others.

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs



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