RE: remote admin

Little, Chris
2005-04-14T15:28:27Z

Details . . . details . . . . details . . . .

-----Original Message-----
From: Ray Olszewski [mailto:ray@comarre.com]
Sent: Thursday, April 14, 2005 10:26 AM
To: linux
Subject: Re: remote admin

At 10:39 PM 4/14/2005 -0700, S. Barret Dolph wrote:
>I would like to be able to do some admin stuff on our school computers
>from home. What is best way to do this? Are programs such as "Webmin"
>better than remote logins or just different. The administrative tasks
>are usually more school administration than computer administration but not
always just that.
>For example, I am now working on getting chinese input on our school
>computer. School administration work is usually just things like
>updating documents and making sure that the latest materials are available
to them.

At the level of generality you have posed this question, it really has no
one answer. The options available to you depend on how your school computers
are connected to the Internet (mainly, what sorts of NATing and other
firewalling are involved), how you normally admin them locally (consoles or
X, mainly), and the nature and speed of your home (and school)
connection(s) to the Internet. And, of course, what approaches you
personally find "better" or "worse" ... for example, I find editing config
files on a console in vi convenient, but that's just a personal preference,
not an objective "better".

If everything is fast enough, the firewalling permits it, and you normally
use X to admin, then consider using remote X sessions via VNC.

If everything is very slow and firewalling is a big issue, then consider
setting up an ssh server at school that you can log into from home, then
connect from to the other systems you need to remore admin. Console logins
will best handle slow speeds.

I haven't used Webmin or anything like it in years, but using it, as best I
recall, depends on its having the specific modules you need for what you
want to do. (The Debian packaging system, for example, has a bout 40
webmin-* modules, each of which does something quite specific.) Check it
closely against your exact requirements to see if it will serve your "more
school administration than computer administration" purposes.

Webmin does have a module for uploading documents, so if "updating documents
and making sure that the latest materials are available to them"
in practice means creating docs at home and uploading them, Webmin can help
you do that.

I can't even begin to guess what is involved in "getting chinese input on
our school computer", so I don't know what Webmin modules might help with
that.

In fact, as I reread your message, I can't even tell if you want to be able
to access one or several hosts at the school ... in one place you say
"computers" but in another "computer". As usual, the details matter to the
answer.

-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at