This week I have been mainly focussed on preparing the PAM configuration required for DICE Ubuntu machines. Comprehending all the PAM config is always a bit of a brain-melting process, the syntax is horrid, the options are myriad and the potential for introducing a security hole is high. I’ve taken the chance to modernise parts […]

As more schools have become involved with the switch to Ubuntu it has become clear that the lag between the weekly stable LCFG release being made and it actually becoming available for MDP users is causing many problems and extra work. To overcome this issue we have begun creating a new daily snapshot release. This […]

As part of the initial Ubuntu investigation project last year I looked at Debian package repository management. At the time I wanted something simple which I could get going quickly so I set up our local package repository service using reprepro. It is reasonably easy to use but has one very annoying drawback which is […]

Base The base list for a platform is mostly just all the required, important and standard packages. On top of that are the packages necessary to satisfy the dependencies for the LCFG core and standard component along with utilities that administrators would expect to have available as standard on all machines. We are still working […]

For installing Ubuntu machines we use the Minimal netboot installer which is based on the Debian installer technology. This allows the preseeding of configuration options so that the install can be completed in a fully automated fashion without any user interaction. We have had LCFG support for this installer for a while now which allows […]