[frgeek-michiana] Warehouse Report - 2/28/2008
- From: Tom Brown <tbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: FreeGeek Michiana <frgeek-michiana@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 29 Feb 2008 10:38:29 -0500
:: Outreach
I sent follow up emails to several organization which have expressed
interest in collaborating with us. And two emails to two new groups. I
also contacted Perley re the next FreeBox class.
The parish director of special projects and two high school students
from St. Adalbert visited the warehouse tonight. The students are not
free to volunteer until this summer. But they are definitely interested.
Both the students are bi-lingual (English/Spanish) and have good
technical vocabularies. Another adult, from St. Casimir, was scheduled
to visit. She became ill at the last minute and canceled. The special
projects director invited us (Richard and me) to visit St. Casimir's
school. She will begin volunteering and training as soon as possible.
:: Food Bank Project
Forest contacted the Food Bank director. They lost their bookkeeper and
the director is distracted with the fallout for the time being. Forest
will stay in touch with the Food Bank director.
Regarding the kiosk system, Mike has determined that blocking all URLs
in the browser is an easy hack.
If this were a system analysis project, we would be in the Investigation
Phase and completing the "feasibility study" subsection.
- initial investigation
- information gathering
- feasibility study
- process and products analysis
- cost/benefit analysis
- communication with client
The next step is "process and products analysis" which is pre-production
planning, followed by analyzing costs and benefits for the Food Bank and
Free Geek Michiana. The final step is to present our findings to the
Food Bank. If both parties agree the project is feasible and worth
implementing, I will negotiate a contract which will include cash,
in-kind contributions or some combination of the two.
:: Vector Linux Installation Change?
Kevin and Dale ran into serious problems with two boxes tonight. In
reviewing the issues which included flaky CDROMs, Mike observed that
CDROMs are likely to cause us the most problems because they tend to
wear out slowly causing intermittent errors, and they are generally
cheaply manufactured. If we continue to depend on CDROMs to install
Vector Linux, we are likely to continue to have problems.
Dale observed that marginal CDROMs are typically good enough for audio
and video reproduction but disastrous for installing operating systems
and the older the system the more likely the CDROM is marginal.
Mike pointed out we used to clone Vector Linux from a master drive on to
slave drives rather than install from CDs, and we would gain by
returning to that method.
A protocol similar to cloning or ghosting is to install Vector Linux on
hard drives using a powerful newer system, then install the pre-loaded
drives in FreeBoxes and tweak the configurations to fit. To test this
alternate method, Dale, Kevin and I configured a righteous P3 box: 1000
MHz CPU with 512MB of RAM and a late model CDROM. The test load took no
more than 20 minutes from start to finish on an relatively slow 6GB IDE
hard drive. Time ran out before we could install the test hard drive in
a P2 box and tweak the configuration with VASM. However Dale was
impressed with the load time, in fact jubilant.
Kevin has a copy of Norton Ghost we can use to test the cloning method.
I think only the "corporate" edition of Ghost does the type of cloning
we need.
:: Compaq Laptops for Ebay
Mike successfully installed Damn Small Linux (DSL) on an old Compaq
laptop with 16MB of RAM -- that's what I'm talking about! There wasn't
enough memory to get sound to work and the GUI was slow. But what the
heck. Our goal was to prove the laptops work. Done.
Mike took the rest of the Compaq laptops and a known good docking
station home to complete the installs/testing. When he returns them,
Kevin will set up an Ebay auction with photos and descriptions. The
units will sell as a lot rather than individually.
:: Kevin's Right Arm
The swelling in his hand and wrist is going down according to Kevin, and
the pins are in the right places according to the surgeon. Kevin is
doing remarkably well with one arm out of commission. He, admittedly, is
a tough old bird. He is also the "one-armed armed man." Kevin has a
permit to carry.
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