What Can I Do w/ an SGI Challenge XL and No Money?

Adam Turman asks: "The school where I do tech work in the summers just received a 4-processor SGI Challenge XL Irix machine. As it is a public magnet school serving eight of the poorest counties in Virginia, we have very little money to pay someone to support the machine, and none of us who work here know any Unix past 'cd' and 'ls'. As far as I know, we would not receive any money from the sale of the machine. So, I have to ask: What is this computer best suited doing? Would it be better to hire someone who knows IRIX or learn it ourselves? How much would we need to pay a good systems administrator? Forgive my ignorance of UNIX and related subjects, but I feel that Slashdot is the best place to get ideas for what to do with this system." Any admins nearby looking to donate some time to a worthy cause?

Comments

Re:USE THAT PUPPY!

[bluGill]

I agree, worst case is let the kids who want to figgure it out. However there are two gottchas to this approach: Make sure that you have the ability to wipe the entire system clean should you want to use it. You never know what the kids leave behind (perhaps on accident), and it is best to start from a clean slate once in a while.

Second, make sure that the kids can use this to harm other machines. Most kids are good, but there are bad apples in every bunch, so protect yourself from them.

Lots of useful things to do with this machine, so don't let it go to waste.

Get some CBT courses on unix for students

[anticypher]

Get some computer based training courses about unix for your students. CBT Systems has a few from intro level to advanced admin functions. There must be at least a dozen companies with some sort of Computer Based Learning systems out there. Search the web for a few.

Find the students who would like to learn unix as an extra-curricular activity, and assign some lessons to them. Lessons should include:
- installing the operating system from scratch
- installing security patches on the OS
- basic system admin functions (adduser, backups,... )
- configuring email
- installing a web server
- basic network admin functions
- find, install, and configure a public domain 3D rendering software package for SGI
- make the rendering software usable by several simultaneous users
- assign some students to render some 3D objects
- assign some advanced students to create a small animation clip using freely available SGI software

and turn them loose. Make them write reports on what they have done for each lesson (so you can pass their reports to others to learn from).

After the first semester or so, there will be a hard-core group who will love the system. Use them to administrate the system. Others who only want to point and click on web browsers will not find it interesting, leave them to their macs and windoze machines.

Make sure you impress upon the core group they are responsible for keeping the system in a functioning state, usable by other students at any time (except for pre-announced down times, just like in a real company), and it must conform to your school districts policy (no launching DDoS, no fake e-mail, no warez). When they become responsible for keeping the system clean, they tend to become extremely good at keeping the black hats off the system.

the AC