Re: Setting specific IP address?

From: Moe Trin (ibuprofin_at_painkiller.example.tld)
Date: 05/14/05 

Date: Fri, 13 May 2005 19:30:20 -0500

In article <d61oft$seu$1@newsfeed.th.ifl.net>, andy smart wrote:

>LOL, actually we tend to miss the 'reload' stage on ours. We're a school
>where anything can happen to our PCs, and frequently does. We've tried
>everything we can possibly do to prevent them accessing the C drives,
>but they still find ways to do which we can't disallow without stopping
>XP working for example, they just keep pushing the damn envelope.

There's a huge advantage to having the threat of firing to keep those
systems under control. In the old days, the solution was to withdraw
the 'computer privileges' which basically meant that the miscreant flunked
that course (and may have thus failed the entire year). It's a lot harder
today, especially with the students being much more computer savvy. Still,
I thought that microsoft had improved the security slightly.

>We can't use nice Dymo lables on ours, they keep peeling them off, we
>have to use magic marker!

I don't know what they are using as an adhesive on our property decals,
but I hear our interns complaining they have to use a chipping hammer to
get them off when the systems are retired. I've got some surplus gear at
home, and can still see where the decals were.

>In one of our rooms of 31 workstations I did a complete re-install on 4
>last week.

Slight advantage of "diskless workstations" which load all software from a
central file server. The way our "at risk" system out in the DMZ are run
is off of 'read-only' media. You used to be able to get hard disk drives
that had a jumper to set them so. The modern alternative is to put the O/S
onto a CD, and boot from that. As mentioned, few of our system (and none
of the user-land workstations) have a drive for removable media, which tends
to reduce the risks. (Occasionally, mommy or daddy bring in offspring for
one reason or another - and this lack of drives reduces the chance of them
installing something on the parents computer - which is running a *nix
rather than windoze anyway.)

>We often do entire rooms during the vacation just to clear any lingering
>issues.

That also effects your equipment replacement schedule. Ours is more or less
even across the year - yours comes in one lump.

>In our situation, and to be honest it's mainly only in education where
>this happens, regular reinstalling is the only way to go.

This is where an application server network, like the old Novell Netware,
is at an advantage. You can put minimum stuff on the workstation, and serve
the applications from a controlled source. Microsoft was more interested in
selling copies of operating systems, so NT killed off that scheme.

>I'll look into some of your ways of doing stuff though, always
>interested in seeing if something works for us better.

For us, the "install floppy' is a severely cropped version of an O/S that
can run a simple text interface (GUIs are to heavy) and knows how to access
the network file servers. For our workstation install, the entire thing is
vanilla, and there are only (I think) four files (one being /etc/hosts,
and the others are host configuration files) that are unique to that
host. Our users home directories are on network file servers, so things
are really run in boiler-plate mode. Our servers are somewhat similar in
concept. The base install for a print server (for example) is also generic.
File, application, authentication and network services (DNS, logging,
internal web) servers all have a basic installation, which goes on one
partition. This scheme also simplifies backups tremendously. All of the
data that will be served is on other partitions or even other disks. Thus,
when some hardware goes pear shaped, we can take a generic box and pop in
a new server install, then either restore the data from backups, or swap in
the old data disks as appropriate.

        Old guy

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