For the moment, we installed a single lab, for which we are going to start training from next November. There’s a single server plus about 26 client machines. This is the first production run, and there should be certainly room for improvements, on the next schools we have already in queue.
Here’s a photo of client machines in the Lab installing themselves via PXE from NethServer:
Will try to do it! It is probably going to be done in some time, as we clearly want to finish our own documentation, but I will share them for sure
Here they are
They are not so sexy, but at the moment they are working fine and are integrated inside the clean NethServer web GUI.
Oh, did I mention that you may try the whole setup using virtual machines with VirtualBox, Vagrant, git and ansible? Install these softwares, then configure (within VirtualBox) a host-only interface on 192.168.1.0/24 network (not 192.168.1.1), disable the integrated DHCP on that interface, then do:
$ git clone GitHub - bglug-it/server-config: Ansible playbooks for a SAMBA domain controller with NethServer - Progetto Scuola, BgLUG test
$ cd test
$ # this would take some time, as it downloads a base box from hashicorp.com
$ vagrant box add syntaxerrormmm/nethserver
$ vagrant up
$ ./run.sh
Right after its configuration, you will have a NethServer virtual installation already configured (root password: vagrant). Please pay attention at the first steps within the run.sh scripts: it asks to configure your future NethServer with all the information needed
Cheers
Additional — syntaxerrormmm
Ansible will configure the server to create a fully working PXE environment to install clients via preseed (in italian at the moment, sorry), but to make preseeding work you need a complete local mirror of all repositories related to Ubuntu 14.04 LTS + some PPAs. Ansible will configure apt-mirror to do so and to make it synchronized via cron, but please be aware that to complete the full repository as we intended, you will need at least 280 GB of virtual space plus a lot of time and bandwidth. This could be simply unfeasible for most of the people.
I will release (in the near future, I hope) some changes within ansible playbooks to make the mirroring part optional, adjusting accordingly the preseed files and the ansible-pull playbook for the clients, and providing a better internationalization to the client installation.