Day Nine

Today was a bit slack. I emailed another company that supports our Windows servers giving them my ideas on our big system upgrade which may or may not be happening soon (Windows 2000 to Server 2008, new Citrix). Hopefully they will come back with some recommendations and pricing ideas so I can at least see if the money side of it would work out.

1 person emailed in to say they liked the new website. They're senior so that's good.

Updated a few final machines to 10.4.11. Fixed a backup box that had gone wrong. Edited some VHS tapes to DV.....then to Flash.

Our web guy worked out how to set the staff email to work at from home without having to chose a "slow connection" button. I emailed our LEA to implement this change. I think it takes a week to sort out, although, I will be surprised if it works after a week!

The other tech looked at some scripting and packaging software, making some amendments to old scripts to keep them working.

Need to sort out year 12's email accounts, and sort out a list of new year 7 logins for Tuesday.

And........our web tech (the original one, not the one that left after 5 days) left today. Bad times. And no, we don't have a replacement. It's all going to go off next week!

Day Eight

Nearly two weeks down and nothing has caught fire. This is good news!

Sorted out some support contracts today with a Mac company. Only took me about 5 minutes. I had the impression from the guy I took over from that it was some long drawn out process as it seemed to take him ages to contact the company! It's all in place, but it looks like they have been previously given the WRONG serial number for our server hardware.  Someone has mixed up the "S" and "5" characters, and added a "3" in to another one.

The second media studies room now has working speakers. I disconnected them from the crappy projector in the room, and re-wired them to a new amp, which I hooked up to the computer and VCR. Should work fine.

The Lacie NAS boxes got moved out of IT and in to Music and Drama to spread the backups around the school, and get them out of offices where people have to hear them! Was a bit of a faff, but it's sorted now.

Finally managed to take 3 computers back to the other site. They are all set up and working. Hurrah. Had a look at the site officer's PC today - it was so filthy inside it looked like someone had carpeted it.

We launched the new school website today. May god bless her and all that visit her (!?). I emailed ALL the staff to tell them this, with some posh words such as "media rich" and  "transition". Hopefully the Big Boss will be happy I used my initiative and contacted the staff about this.

Made some notes on what we need to think about when we go from Windows 2000 to a 2003/2008 domain. There's quite a lot to consider, as well as lots of money needed. As well as new Office and Citrix.

Finally, I had a browse through our Wiki. It's VERY our of date, VERY incomplete, and VERY written from a viewpoint of the person that set it up, rather than being written for a complete n00b to read and get a grip on what's going on.

Someone brought some random plants in today. Staff room looks like a garden centre.

Day Seven

The Big Boss came in today to catch up on some paperwork. He liked what we'd done to the layout of our office. In fact, he mentioned how that's the layout he would have chosen in the first place. He also mentioned that the extremely small IT office next door needed two computers installing for it's 3 members of staff. I won't have time to arrange that before term starts unfortunately so those teachers might have to use their laptops for a couple of days...

JED has been upgraded for 2009 on Benny and is ready to use. The year 11 --> year 12 transition accounts have been enabled. All departed students have been moved into an off roll section of Active Directory to keep things tidy.

Firefox 3 is FINALLY hacked / locked and working on 10.5 machines. There was a clash happening from when we first ran network homes in 2005/6. I deleted everyone's Firefox profiles en-mass which has fixed the problem.

One dead iMac has been boxed up ready to send back for replacement.

I've also re-written the job description and advert for a new technician, but with a web editor focus. Hopefully this will be approved so we can interview quickly.

The other tech has fixed ALL the Mac printing and ordered £2000 of consumables stock for the new term.

Web tech has nearly finished the new website and also helped work on the new job ad.

Day Six

So tired!!

Today was spent configuring print queues across the campus. They are set up and tomorrow the other tech is going to go round and check they all work fine.

Firefox 3 was configured within the app - proxy and home pages are set, and the stupid Mozilla home tab is disabled. Only down side is that the mozilla.cfg file doesn't seem to work (even set up correctly with the 13 character offset thing). Also, locking options with lockPref doesn't work. Ffox has been pushed out to all 33 new machines and works.....

...once users delete their Profile folder! I had a look at setting a login hook to do this, but it has to be run as root meaning that using a $1 current user script variable returns root as the user, so that doesn't work. Oh well...

Looked into the BECTa FITS stuff today - there's lots I'd like to implement but as always time is an issue.

ARD works for teachers now - just force a pref on the specific teacher machine and it works fine. No messing around with user templates etc. This just needs the internet blocking script / task set up and it's ready to roll.

Year 12 were created and given email accounts, too, so they should be ready to log in next week.

All the surplus hardware from the staffroom was put in to storage today until we assess who needs an upgrade once term starts.

This is all

Day Five

It's only bloody Friday...

Lots of stuff was sorted today, and nothing really broke, which was nice.

Art tech's computer was replaced, made portable and had Illustrator installed. It all appears to be fine. Kiddy Internet is all sorted. With lots of machine moved around over the summer  there was some hardcore Censornetting to be done. It's all fine now.

The problem's we've been having with PaperCut were due to the guy that left installing it wrongly and stuipdly. It's been set back to how it was (as recommended by the PaperCut people's docs after some dicking around with shell scripts which half worked and half didn't) and has been removed from the local machines. It's fine, charges kids, and their work even comes out the printer.

Laptop production line is up and running, we have another one nearly ready now(!)

ARD is installed in the new ICT room, although we can't put the plist in the default user's profile as we're not running the LocalHomes we're used to in there. Perhaps put this in to the default user template?

Firefox is still being a bitch. All machines have not been set to have our internal home page as the start page (why?), and usually it says there is a version already running and will not start. To get round this you have to delete the Profiles folder in App Support - could be a pain as everyone already has a profile.....

Next week - 

• Still need to make L6 accounts
  
• Still need to clear crap from staff room area
  
• Still need to make Firefox work, and ARD and a lone scanner that no one uses...
  
• Still need to go to the other site!
  
• Still need to install printers on all Macs
• Still need to heavily test 10.4 MCX

Day Four

Even MORE stuff doesn't work! I wish the guy that left had mentioned such loose ends, as there seems to be a ton of them...

10.5 config - allowing apps through MCX doesn't work, however, denying them DOES. So, you have to deny anything you don't run, except certain folders you wish people TO have access too. Following?

No one gets our internal website as their homepage, so Firefox will need to be tweaked for that to work. Kids can't get external sites - an issue with Censornet. I believe the workstations have been added but as I only came across that 10 minutes before leaving, I won't know until tomorrow. Sidebar prefs need changing so kids can get 'Documents' rather than just their home. 

Found a new iMac that has swallowed a CD but won't eject / mount / boot from it. Oops.

90% of Macs still can't print.

Good stuff:

Backup is all fine.

Nearly got 1 laptop ready for a teacher.

32/33 machines in the ICT room work, all installed with base software, Photoshop, Filemaker, Office and AppleWorks.

iLife and iWork is installed on all ICT room machines (still needs to go everywhere else though)

Tomorrow - sort out the 8th machine in D1 and install it's additional packages. Perfect the MCX settings, finish the set up of the Art tech's Mac and install Illustrator. Maybe dump 3 machines in the other site after fixing them. Just the two of us in tomorrow.....so we'll see how far we get!

Day Three

Rubbish.

Only two IT rooms out of the whole school have printers assigned. MCX settings for which apps kids can launch are screwed - you set approved apps, kids can launch nothing. You disable app management - they can run anything, so the rule is being applied correctly, but not working as expected.

Netinstall still doesn't work and as we're running out of time I've decided to install the new Macs off an ASR disk image. Takes 10 mins per machine. At least they will be ready for the new term this way (did try to salvage the old Netboot config off the other broken server, but the disk wouldn't mount in our only SATA caddy thing. What a load of crap).

iWork installs with Iceberg / LanRev didn't work properly, so thats just being installed straight, with a  script to move it to the right place after install.

GCSE results out tomorrow, so after that we should have an up to date list of L6 so we can build them new accounts, and disable and archive off roll year 11.

GOOD STUFF: 

-Archived laptop backups to tape and recycled the backup set ready for the new term (fresh start). 

-IT 'welcome' guide is printed, stapled, and ready to hand out. 

-Year 7 students are now managed through MCX (allegedly....this needs testing) 

-Password Policy Monkey seems to work and no one has rung up to complain

-Website backs up to other web host's space with a nice FTP script

-Half of the IT room is installed with 10.5 & apps

Day Two

Alright treacle?

So today, we managed to get nearly everything updated to 10.4.11 across both sites. The other tech is working on installing iLife and iWork, although it seems iWork isn't behaving with a network based install at the moment.

Backing up to the auto tape-loader seems to be working nicely, although our second backup server seems to be very full - this will need looking at quite soon. Had to restore our fleeting web author's work to find some Photoshop work of his to complete some work on the website, but his original files weren't there (probably as he started and resigned before the backup had chance to run!). 

Password Policy Enforcer is now running on our domain. It works, but seems to give a generic and stupid error message if your password strength is not up to scratch like "your password must be 0 characters long". I expect PPE won't work at all on the finance machines until they are removed from the admin subnet.

In other news, the office was changed round today and as a result, there is masses of space AND an actual help desk.

A local primary school's summer production video is capturing to the computer overnight and will eventually make it on to DVD. Also started printing the staff IT welcome pack.

Day One

Progress is being made! Every Mac is now moved to the new MCX server, some are on 10.4.11 and the other tech is sorting out printing. Although, it appears every single kid can run any application they want.....another thing to resolve.

Been through a ton of paperwork and filed it in box files so anyone can turn their hand to the information they need. Hopefully this will be a better system than before, when there was, well, no system.

Still not entirely sure how the backup system dumps to tape, or when, but I have the Retrospect manual for some bedtime reading, so that should be a right laugh.

It starts here...

This blog has been set up to document the blood, sweat and caffeine-induced shakes of our busy school IT department.

With two weeks until everyone arrives back, we have to sort out quite a lot of stuff:

• The MCX server has died. A new server has been set up, but around 200+ Macs need to be told to point to the new server, checked they are in the correct group, and have printers assigned.
• The "new" server seems to die every few hours (good old Apple server software), refusing to launch any applications. This will probably need to be backed up and reinstalled quite soon.
• NetInstall will not work. Bitchman's software doesn't seem to help. Is it because of PPC hardware hosting Intel images? Does it matter? Does anyone actually know? This has to work so we can boot 33 iMacs in to 10.5
• iLife and iWork '08 need installing across the campus on 200+ Macs (minus iMovie 08, as it's rubbish) to stop version mismatches
• Need to prep at least one or two cranky old laptops ready for new staff for the new term
• New 6th form accounts need to be made, added to new year 7 and staff and that load of people given logons.....as well as EVERYONE being given new email credentials!

On top of this I need to unravel a backup system, write an IT welcome pack, convert hours of science video to Flash format, write an advert for some web/technician/content author/monkey person as the last one left after 5 days, and other such delights.

Thank goodness the other Tech is back Monday!