Welcome to Gandolf's Utilities Site
This
site is dedicated to utilities to make the lives of technology
coordinators in our district easier.
The utilities on this site
are made primarily for SuSE Linux as it is
the platform I use on my servers,
however I will also post
utilities for Win2k and Mac OS X
My utilities will include
programs I have written, custom hacks of programs, config files, and
the occasional Win2k regedit hack
Every thing on this site is
designed to work in ANY NYCBOE high school.
VTC and Outreach sites
I will do my best not to leave you out.
Current projects
Alt School Account Manager
The alt school account manager is a small program I am writing in Perl. The goal is to create a system to dynamically add, remove, and manage user accounts for students on the network. This project is currently in version 0.0.2 ALPHA. This means the features that are in it work however not all the features are in it yet. It can add and remove accounts from a download enrollment file or print enrollment printed to file from UAPC, can do basic tracking of IAUPC contracts and work may be posted on the Internet contracts, activate accounts, change passwords, lock and unlock accounts, and look up contact information. The account manager uses a search engine that allows you to narrow your search for student by multiple search parameters including but not limited to name, address, phone number, gender. Currently the account manager is only available for Linux but the next version should support Mac OS X and eventually win2k. Please go to the project page for further details.
Webmin
Webmin is a web based administration system for UNIX, which includes Linux and Mac OSX. Webmin is written entirely in Perl and dose not require a web server because it includes its own. In addition, it is built on a modular architecture that allows rapid development of new modules. There are over a hundred modules available for free over the web. All things considered, it is an extremely flexible and powerful system that is easy enough to use, so that even a novice can preform advanced system administration tasks. Most of my future projects will be based around webmin, including the next version of the Alt School Account Manager and Alt School VPN Proxy project.
Linux LDAP
LDAP stands for light weight directory access protocol. LDAP is the back end for Win2k active directory service, Apple net info, and can be used as a network authentication system for Unix and Linux. The point of this project is to create a single system for managing user names, passwords, logs, email address books, network permissions, and tracking of student activity. I have rpms for MIT Kerberos and LDAP however this project is not yet ready for use in schools but, hopefully, will be soon.
Alt School VPN and Transparent Proxy project
As we all know the project disconnect black monoliths don't work very well. Truth be told, they are responsible for a lot of problems you probably don't know you have, such as broadcast packet flooding. Project disconnect is trying to fix this problem with Vlans, however, this won't work because they assume the workstations are responsible instead of the real culprit—their own firewall. Unfortunately, we cant get into these machines with out being blamed for everything that's wrong with everything they ever screwed up, not to mention the threat of prosecution the like to hold over your head. To sample their threats hit ctrl-alt-delete on your on the Netfinity server in your MDF. So, the solution is simple, put a firewall between project disconnect and your student network, and while we are at it, why not add some cool features, such as a transparent caching filtering proxy server that you can adjust yourself, and works without any configuration of the browser on the workstations. And maybe something so the guys in the Sup's office can login to your network and fix problems without actually physically being there. Why if they could do that, maybe you could have one of those mythological vacations we keep hearing about without being interrupted. This project is currently in the planing and research phase, and is planed to be developed to work with the Linux LDAP project.