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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    City of Largo, KDE Rollout
From:       Dave Richards <drichard () largo ! com>
Date:       1999-11-26 21:51:24
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Non-Member Post.

All-
   I wanted to update everyone on the KDE rollout that happened at
the City of Largo last week.  It mostly went very well.  
   A little backround on us:  We are a networking computer shop, and
all applications are pushed from centralized Unix & Linux servers to
our entire user base (700 accounts, 350 NCSs, 250 concurrently).  All
of our users log in via XDMCP to a SCO Openserver machine and get a
'desktop'.  Previously we were using the IXI desktop that is included
with OpenServer, but this product is not being developed anymore, and
had a dated Windoze 3.1 style interface. Because of the skillset of
many of our users, we are using our desktop system only as a
springboard to other Unix machines.  Once logged in, when a selection
is made (i.e. WordPerfect) a rcmd/rsh/remsh is issued to that server
and the appliation starts on another machine and from that point runs
over there.  This allows us to scale the servers at will, and also
gets us away from the argument that some have against centralized
computing: "When the server is down, EVERYTHING is down".  If we have
a failure during the day, only a small portion of the functionality
is lost.  One machine is used for GroupWise, one is used for
WordPerfect, one is used to Netscape, etc.  A slide show presentation
that I did at SCOForum this year is available at
http://www.sco.com/skunkware/largo/

  Ron Record at SCO modified kpanel for us, so that the lower portion
of the Kmenu (Logout, Lock Screen, Panel, Disk Navigator) was
changed.  Disk Navigator was removed, and Logout and Lock Screen were
altered so that they called a program that I wrote myself. For
instance, we are using a local window manager on the NCs (to reduce
network loads), and by default kpanel sends signals to kwm, which
won't work for us.  The modified kpanel calls
/usr/local/kde/bin/nc_logout and my program correctly logs the NCs
out.  Disk Navigator was removed because of the skillset of our
users, they do not understand what they are clicking on and access to
the local file systems normally causes problems for them.
  Here is what happened at rollout:
  * Rollout went VERY well, the memory footprint of each user is
about 200K of private memory (that's AMAZING!).  With 2GB of memory,
I will be able to run hundreds of users on one machine.  Our
currently load is about 200-250 at a time.
  * The kpanel requires that kfm is running.  I tried to get around
this, but this seems to be hardcoded into the panel.  This was a
concern for me, because normally we don't let them have graphical
file managers, because the lower skilled users tend to delete things
and not know it.  This caused the only problem for us.  One user
thought the kfm was a Windoze 3.1 style way to run applications, and
didn't realize applications run from the "K" at the bottom (even
though documentation was given to everyone).  This user then went
into the pulldown, and select "Edit", then "Applications", and then
started putting applications that she didn't need into her trash. 
Much to my dismay, this deletes the GLOBALs used for everyone, and
suddenly applications were being removed for EVERYONE.  I failed to
set Unix protections on the contents of 'applnk' to 755 to not allow
this to happen, because I didn't know the users had a way to delete
the globals setups on their own.  We restored the files in applnk,
and I changed the protections and this backdoor was removed.

I wanted to thank everyone who is working on KDE for creating
something that works so well for us.  The feedback has been very
positive.  Good job!

I'm working on a project page that describes how this all works, as a
model for other cities or anyone that wants to try it.  It's a VERy
stable way to run software, and allows upgrades to all users easily.

My suggestions for KDE in future releases:

* Unbundle the requirement to run kfm with kpanel for those of us
that are trying to project our users from themselves! ;)

* Allow the lower portion of the Kmenu to be configured via files,
instead of being hard coded.

============================

I welcome comments and suggestions...

Dave Richards
City of Largo, FL (near Tampa/St Pete)
Systems Administrator 

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