I have to teach Linux to my class!! HELP!

[AWebDesign]

Hey,

I'm a senior in Highschool, and we have 2 year program, the first year is A+ computer repair, the 2nd year, which I am in, teaches networking. Well, we have to network the classroom, and the teacher would like a fileserver/DHCP server. She was going to try to use NT, but we really don't have a computer that could run it efficently. She discovered that I know Linux, and asked if I would teach a 2 week course to the students and some faculty. It will include building the Linux Box from parts, installing Linux and getting it setup. Here's where I need help.

1. The school board network is run over Novell Netware, if we want to get Internet, we have to logon, I can get on Netware via IPX, but I need a method for TCP/IP??

2. What are some good teaching materials I could use?

3. What distro should I use, I don't want to start with a distro that is not usually used with servers, but I don't want to jump into BSD's with a bunch of NEWBIES!

4. Here's the computer I'll be setting it up on, (it's a POS computer, but maybe it will work)

133 MHZ by and amd chip
128 megs of RAM
24x IDE CD-ROM
1 2 GIG IDE HDD (For the OS)
1 4 GIG IDE HDD (For Storage)
2 3com NICS, one for the LAN in the room, 1 for the Novell WAN.

I'm going to try to get a faster Computer, especially since my teacher got a "idea" today.

She wants me to run a webserver off this poor computer also, so that just people on the School Board WAN can access it, and set it up so teachers can send questions to us, and we post them on the page, etc. I'm going to use apache for that. I doubt this machine will get many hits, maybe 10 or 20 a day, lol.

Anyway. Lets all respond with a little help ok guys?

Thanks,

Aaron

[mattmorrow]

Can't address you network connectivity issue, except to say that Linux supports tcp/ip...

Materials: Grab a copy of Linux For Dummies as a good reference for entry level curriculum. Any other book on Unix basics would have good stuff as well. If you choose RedHat, O'Reilly has a great intro-level book dedicated to RedHat.
Distro:
Very subjective, but:
As a newbie to Linux, I found RedHat very easy to learn and use:
Easy install - you can select from preconfigured installs like "workstation" or "server" and customize those - if you want; let the install do the partitioning for you
(you still have to provide some H/W info); However, RH recognizes alot of hardware
Easy GUI - RH 6.2 used Gnome/Enlightenment, 7.0 uses Gnome/Sawfish - both pretty intuitive.
Good Luck!

[MkIII_Supra]

I suggest either SuSE or Red Hat.

Why?

SuSE is currently supported and utilized by IBM, need I say more?

Red Hat, like it or not it is considered the standard for any business model in corporate America. Bottom line is both are well known and well supported in the industry.

Since what you are teaching will eventually get your fellow classmates into the industry then it would be wise to use what is known and supported in the industry.

Otherwise I would say Slack or Drake.

As far as what to teach, that's easy. Start them with the history of UNIX and the TCP/IP protocol standards. Keep it brief but give enough data to educate without overwhelming. Then go into how the systems use TCP/IP to communicate and how an address is assigned. The thing is that even though you are using Linux as the platform for instuction, TCP/IP is pretty much universal. How systems connect to a network is also pretty universal.

You can teach basic UNIX (Linux is a derivitive so it applies...) concepts and history in 3 days. TCP/IP in about 2 then next week would be practicals and other network related information. It can be done but the time alloted is very restrictive. I will help as I can but as a full time student with a full time job and a family it's hard to allot large quantities of time.

I am also an instructor so I can give tips and pointers on curricullum develpment and presentation.

Good Luxk....
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The Dragon is swift and powerful. Beware his wrath...
Honor your family and yourself. Speak not out of passion but out of wisdom and temper the fires of war that reside in you, and you shall then reach your full measure as a man of Honor, Courage and Integrity.
http://www.angelfire.com/wa2/MkIIISupra/ (http://www.angelfire.com/wa2/MkIIISupra)

[This message has been edited by MkIII_Supra (edited 16 January 2001).]

[AWebDesign]

I was thinking abour RH, and now i'm pretty sure I'll use it. The beleive that RH is Linux, so I'll have to go over the whole shabang with them :-). I'm almost dreading doing this because I'm not a very good teacher, and my teacher is so picky, and has to know everything. It's actually kinda funny, she used to pick on my about Linux, now she's depending on it! lol.

Aaron

[lad24mx]

I will recommend than other than buying Red Hat or your distro of choice you buy a couple of good books. The "For Dummies Series of Books" maybe ok for beginners, but I much rather you buy "The Linux Bible" from IDG books, the author does a good job at covering everything Red Hat.That ought of be the only book you may need in the subject, then again ther's is Running Linux by O'reilly Publishing, and for a quick intro to Samba (should you need it) try Sams Teach yourself Samba in 24 hrs.

My two cents.

[knute]

Look at it this way...
You are the expert as far as they (being your class and teacher) are concerned.
Once you realize that they are depending on you for ALL Their information on linux, then you can relax. http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/smile.gif
If somebody asks you a question that you don't know, fess up and tell them that you will find the answer to that -- or better yet, show them where they can find their answers. (http://www.linuxdoc.org, man pages, etc... ) It may spark their interest to know that there is a wealth of information out there about how things work in an OS, if they really want to learn...

Anyway, Good luck on demoing linux for 2 weeks...

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Knute

If it's on the network and ain't secured, it's free game.

[optech]

in my grade 13 class (college level for high school here in ontario) a couple guys installed RedHat on a computer for their final project. all they did was install it, and present it to the class... X wasn't working, but they had the CLI just fine. all they did was show the filesystem, and the teacher gave them a 92%.
everyone in the class thought they were gifted in the ways of computers, but they had a reference sheet for commands in the CLI... also, we had 4 months to do this...

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A zombified, somnambulist society. Leaving us as vitamins for the hibernating human animal. Do you see what I mean? On the surface you hate, but you know you need me.

[Strike]

There are a couple of programs at freshmeat.net for Netware stuff, and NCPFS is the kernel support for the Netware filesystems.

[foppa]

The book I (and probably many others) would recommend is Running Linux from O'Reilly.

[evil_roy]

I'd go for "A Practical Guide to Linux " by Mark Sobell. It's a bit older than others - but it covers the basics better than any other book I've come across . It is also set out as a text book - it has learning objectives for each part and sets of review questions . You could easily base your whole into course from this book

[Luthor]

Netware supports encapsulated TCP/IP over IPX but you would have to load the drivers on the Novell server and bind them to the NIC(s). Your server admins may have already done this.

I login to our Novell boxes from Linux using ncpmount (one of the utilities Strike alluded to) and it works just fine. It is similar to mounting a floppy or CDROM.

ncpmount -S <servername> /mnt/<mountpoint> -U <username>

The computer you have selected should be able to handle the job you are assigning to it but my suggestion is to boot to the shell and only run X if you absolutely have to for some reason and exit it when you are though.

As mentioned, "Running Linux" (3rd edition) from O'Reilly is a great aid. Here is a
Slashdot review: http://slashdot.org/books/99/09/29/1025211.shtml




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Luthor St. James
(aka [AcK]BillTheCat)

[hswoolve]

pedantry alert

On the NetWare side, check and see which version of netware you've got running. Prior to NetWare 5 (or 4.11, I'm not sure) the default protocol was IPX, starting with 5 (or 4.11, or even 4) the default protocol became TCP/IP, so all you would have to deal with is "normal" networking problems.

If your server runs on the Netware that uses IPX and doesn't have the TCP/IP protocol loaded and bound to a nic (it's a 2 step process, usually during the startup), you can't even ping the machine, since ping works off of IP not the hardware address of the machine (just checked that from a netware server I work with)

[AWebDesign]

I think the server runs netware 5. If so i can use ncps? That's sweet, I can get an ip, and ping other computers, i just couldn't log on, i'll try again and get back to you all.

Aaron