The computer lab at the Centreville Public Library had a variety of issues that we systematically addressed.

Hardware and OS issues

Several of the computers did not function properly, and a couple would not connect to the internet. All of the computers were slow, probably infected with malware, and had low memory and storage capacity. On the first day at the library, we discovered that one of the computers was badly infected with a virus or botnet (as evidenced by the flashing link light on the switch) and was slowing down the entire network. One of the computers also wouldn’t boot up properly, and would only give a black screen with a series of numbers and letters. We took these two computers back to U of I with us to take a closer look. We cleaned out the virus infected computer and installed Edubuntu on it, and we replaced the broken video card on the other computer and installed it with Puppy.

Most of the computers were originally configured with various versions of Windows– 1998 and XP being the most common (there was one computer that was configured with Ubuntu, which was not running properly). The head librarian expressed concern about the lack of appropriate software on the machines and the slowness of the computers. We addressed this by installing Linux on half of the machines, reinstalling XP on the remaining half, adding RAM to several of the slowest computers, and replacing faulty CD drives on three of the computers. We also chose to install Edubuntu on several of the computers, because it contained the kinds of educational software that she felt was needed at the library.

One of the computers had a locked BIOS with a lost password; we went into the motherboard and switched the jumper.

Connecting to the Internet

Part of the reason why some of the computers had problems connecting to the network had to do with subnet masks that were incorrectly configured and IP addresses that needed to be statically assigned. While 255.255.255.224 was the number that the subnet mask needed to be set to, some of the computers were off on the fourth number; we went in and corrected this on the faulty computers. We also went in and manually reassigned IP addresses to all of the computers in a sequential fashion based on the numbers that were available to us. All of the IP addresses of the computers in the library started with the numbers 66.99.71.__. The fourth number ranged from 194 to 223 (these were the numbers that were allotted to the Centreville Public Library computer network system).

Setting permissions

We created unprivileged public accounts on the Edubuntu machines. The public user account has normal read and execute permissions but restricted write permission to the /home/public directory. Puppy Linux is designed to be a single-user system, and makes little to no provision for multiple users. If this becomes a problem for Centreville, we or a future group may look into Grafpup, (it has currently been discontinued) a puppy derivative with a focus on graphics creation that has incorporated the ability to support non-root users. Also, we can look into writing a shell script to backup and restore important system files on some regular basis since the puppy systems will be more vulnerable to casual damage by users.

Connecting all the computers to the printer

All the Linux machines are able to print to the HP Laserjet 4100N connected to Valerie’s cataloging workstation. It took quite some time, but we were also able to connect most of the computers to the HP C5180 color printer. This printer is also connected Valerie’s computer, and each time it was set to be shared on the network, the settings were discarded. The color printer can also be assigned its own IP address and connected directly to the network, which may be the easiest way to resolve the sharing property resetting problem.

Autoupdating

We used a shell script to configure Ubuntu so that it updates itself weekly without any user intervention.