[GRASS-user] setting-up a FOSS GIS lab

[Scott Mitchell]

On 6 Oct 2007, at 03:22, maning sambale wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I am a new instructor on Basic GIS in a small college in the  
> Philippines.
> We find it hard to request for a dedicated GIS lab for student to
> tinker around.
...
> With constant lobbying, I finally persuaded the department to explore
> setting-up a dedicated GIS lab.  No assurance on when and how will
> this initiative will go through, but I was asked to write a proposal
> on how do we plan to implement this project.
>
> I would like to ask this list on experiences in setting up a GIS lab
> for students (both for undergrad & graduate course).  Initially, I
> have the following on my mind:
>
> hardware: 1 server, 5 thin clients
> OS: Linux LTSP route (debian-based)
> GIS applications:  OSGEO stack (GRASS, QGIS, Mapserver)
> databse and stats: R, postgesql
> other apps: standard office applications (openoffice, firefox, pdf  
> reader)
> online course management: moodle

Unfortunately, I have no experience with the thin client route.

I managed to take advantage of the fact that computers were being  
replaced in our formerly windows-only GIS lab, to (1) install some  
FOSS4G tools (QGIS, R, ...) on the new Windows setup, and also (2) to  
repartition the machine so that it has a dual boot setup, offering  
Windows XP or Fedora.  The Linux side has GRASS, Mapserver, QGIS, R,  
and associated utilities.

We set up one machine, then copy the hard drive image to all machines  
in the lab, then go around to each one to just fix the computer ID/ 
hostname in each OS on each machine to make them unique.  This was  
"relatively" painless.  I am also setting up a Fedora-powered server  
to serve out a data directory with NFS (have used SMB shares in the  
meantime), and I am thinking of adding an NFS-mounted /usr/local so  
that I can easily add new software without having to modify each  
client machine.

I realize this doesn't really match what you're proposing, and I  
can't offer experience of relative pros and cons of each approach,  
but if you do consider a local dual-boot option, I'd be happy to  
share more experiences.

Cheers,

Scott Mitchell - Department of Geography and Environmental Studies
Carleton University - Ottawa, Canada