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Computer Services for Students?
FreeCycles asks: "I'm one of the staffers of an all-volunteer university group that provides free shell, mail, and web accounts to students, faculty, and staff. Thanks to the generous donation of a certain famous server manufacturer, we suddenly now have more processing power and storage than we need to sustain our current offerings, and we are trying to figure out what else we could offer the university community. Since many Slashdot readers are current or former university students, what do you wish your university provided to you?"
IMAP mail, instead of POP3 access.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Really well done remote folders are a blessing. Make them usable both with SFTP (for the Unix folk) and whatever folder sharing system is best for Windows that works over the internet.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
for their prono and pirated media collection.
Project Tools for group projects
Forums for classes
Something like http://www.experts-exchange.com/ for answers to questions
Just my 2 cents for things I'd like to see us implement.
QueenB
HDGary secures my bank
Nifty bells and whistles are great, but it does suck to read "Oh, sorry. The network will be up in a little bit." or "CMail is down now. Come back soon." every couple of days. Make it stable, then add stuff. (But I'm sure you already knew that, the fine sys admin that you seem to be.)
Also, you could ask the students and staff what they want. One of those vote and, potentially, win an iPod -- or some such other electronic gadget -- things often has a pretty high turn out. If that doesn't work, hell, you store their mail. Just parse that for ideas!
What if the entire Universe were a chrooted environment with everything symlinked from the host?
Bigger disk quotas are always appreciated.
More web environments would be nice (PHP, Perl, Ruby on Rails).
MySQL backends for said web pages.
Bulk up on the software available from the shell.
Publicly accessible CVS/SVN repositories. As in, users can host their projects there, and grant others rights to check out and maybe even commit.
NetHack.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Subject says it all
Access to php with either mysql or postgresql backend to play around with.
Free shell, mail, and web accounts are already a good deal. Can shell users install and run graphical applications (VNC or X11 over ssh)? If not, that's something you could do with your extra resources. You could run a tor entry node to let users anonymously route their Internet traffic. You could run any number of distributed computing clients. You set up some kind of virtualization and let users have root accounts on their own virtual machine, perhaps after making them sign yet another usage agreement. You could also give me an account. I'm sure I can find a use for some extra computing power!
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
And though it's probably less popular, Sobby, the server half of Gobby.
groupthink: It's good for self-esteem.
subversion, wiki's, and project management tools. Things that help groups of students work together. remote storage is really nice too.
From my experience, the email and web hosting are two most important offerings. Email: I echo offering IMAP access (encrypted, of course) as well as POP3 access. When you say "Web Access", do you mean to the email? That's important.
Ask students for other ideas. I get the feeling that many students (esp. those in non-technical fields) may not want or need much more than that. That's from my POV as an engineer having worked with many non-techies in the past. Besides the email access, the most popular use of IT services was for checking grades, registering for classes, etc., which is now all done eletronically.
Also, check out other university web sites for information and what they offer.
Good luck!
Students will just fill it up with pr0n, warez and mp3s. Trust me. Besides any kid nowadays will have a portable device of some sort.
How about a cluster, to let some kids do cluster programming, or an app design class for clusters?
(insert Beowulf joke here)
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Add some CPU and memory instensive programs like Matlab or Maple. They can be quite handy in math courses, and especially with AI.
Run a game server!
Give everyone a gigabyte or more of online storage space. Provide multiple ways to access it. That should include ssh, webdav over SSL (very important IMO), and possibly crappy-old FTP though I'd personally try to avoid providing any non-secure protocols. Then provide simple instructions on how to use it, probbably primarily through webdav. Windows has built-in support for webdav since Win98, though I think 98 doesn't support HTTPS. You also might consider setting up SAMBA or NFS, though that's a bit more tricky to operate over a WAN.
AccountKiller
When I was in college, they had just started to give each student an email address. I can't say that at the time I appreciated or used it, no one I knew did either, but in hindsight a university run instant messaging service would have been super convenient for keeping in touch with other people in the same class. So instead of spending a half hour trying to figure out what a particularly poorly worded assignment meant, you could just ask.
No, I'm not retarded.
Also, I thought web space was standard but I guess not. It certainly was at my undergrad and even where I got my Master's (which is not a techie school like ugrad was). But I get here for my PhD - a top ten research university - and I find that students no longer get web space. Because the damn undergrads are all on myspace now or whatever. I have some workarounds via my department, but unfortunately my only option for a full website seems to be serving it on my office iMac, with an ungodly long URL.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
I'd say dedicate at least 1% of avalible CPU to something like Folding@Home. Set aside 10% for mathmatica use by the physics department (someday something will happen, and you'll be glad you have friends in high places), and the rest for x11/web/email etc.
Or you could provide email forwarding for life for university alumni. That'd be fucking HUGE.
moox. for a new generation.
Soooooo expensive if you're paying for it yourself!
I'd check out what SIPB (Student Information Processing Board) has done for the MIT community. They've been around almost forever and have done a lot of great of things over the years.
http://www.mit.edu/sipb/sipb.html
You gotta find first gear in your giant robot car
Of course, I'm a student tech employee, but that's beside the point.
In Soviet Russia, backwards is everything.
At my university, computing services provide VPN access into the university network. Not only is this pretty damn useful for accessing the university services (such as the file storage they supply as an SMB share), it is also pretty good when surfing the internet from insecure wireless access points -- such as those in the local Starbucks -- as you can tunnel all your web traffic through it. Make it fast and with enough bandwidth, and those students with laptops will be thankful.
Oh, and if you have enough HDD space... a bigger disk quota is always handy. And contrary to what others have said, students with any sense will not fill it with porn and warez. Trust me, nobody wants the embarrassment of getting caught.
I am a network tech at a librayr and Some of these might work for you . 1. Each student gets enough webspace so that they can use it to maybe backup reports and other files on it. 2. make sure you have enough programs that students might not normally have. like photoshop and programs like that. also email and general server stuf can take up more rescources then you think :)
I'm provided with PHP, but I would like a MySQL server database for my website.
use the extra power to make your network stabe. University networks can have huge flucuations in usage. You might need that extra pwoer a year or two down the road. say if the university accepts more students then they normally do one year. You can never really have extra power. It will be used at some point.
Use Maxima. It's comparable to Matlab and Maple, but opensourced. Granted, yes, you're with a University, so you probably have some money, but jumping through the hoops can be a pain in the ass when you want money.
My university uses a calendar system by Oracle and it's a real pain in the ass. The only way to have it sync with 3rd party applications is to use Oracle's plugin for Office. Calendar systems are something that most people don't use (mostly students), but to people that do use them (think faculty and organized students,) they are indispensable. Have it be based on something that can be used by Outlook iCal, and Sunbird. Also make sure that it can be used as a module through Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Opera.
WebDAV and CalDAV are also great protocols that should not be forgotten.
As someone else mentioned, if you allow people to run graphical applications, VNC is a boon. Nothing is more frustrating than trying to do work (particularly GUI development, where a console is not an option!) in a program like Matlab over an SSH X11 forward. VNC does appear to be faster, at least in these circumstances.
Less course-work Masters degrees.
Im just graduating final year engineering. Thought I would make a addressbook so you can be reminded to get in touch with fellow students. Ive called it www.addressbook.ws. Below is email Im sending out tomorrow once the domain name propogates. In the mean time www.astro.org.nz/addressbook.
Hello fellow students,
Now our paths are diverging it is important to keep in touch so we can laugh at each other's wrinkles later on.
A few months ago I lost my address-book, and dozens of contact details. So I made an online address-book which I could access anywhere and would be safe!
Then I thought that it would be cool if my address-book reminded me to get in touch with people every 6 months or so. So I designed a website to send me emails of people I haven't talked to in a while.
And before I knew it, Voila! The friendly online address-book was born. I thought I would share this with you rascals so you too can keep in touch with each other, and with your business-networks as they grow in the future.
So you can find it here: www.addressbook.ws
Save it too your favourites! It's the last address-book you'll ever need. Let me know if you have any suggestions/requests. This isn't like "MySpace". You don't need a "profile". This is simply a copy of your own personal address-book which emails you =P. You can add new contacts, such as job networks, or student buddies to make sure you keep in touch as time passes.
Goodluck for exams
Name: Jared Broad
Plymouth State University, Plymouth NH
:( ...), FTP access to my personal files, and a few other features I'm sure I haven't found (just found about shell when I saw this and tried it). I even installed Bitchx so now I can chat!
Gives me the standard webct, webmail both through the school portal and horde, a personal website on the domain, FreeBSD shell access, McAfee antivirus (which kindly blocks all IRC for me
Pretty standard offering I suspect.
I am a current student, but I wish I could keep my e-mail address after graduation so I don't have to lose contact with anyone still e-mailing me.
Until you figure out which nice-to-have services you want to provide students, give back by dedicating some of the unused server resources to research projects.
http://grid.org/ comes to mind. I'm sure others will be able to suggest a long list of great organizations that need help!
http://www.wolfpackempire.com/default.htm
Certainly scientific and numerical computing packages are nice - but unless you already have a deal with the vendors trying to negotiate cheap licenses can be complicated.
A free (if resource intensive) option that I'd love to see on our university system would be the possibility of running a virtualized private host, eg. with User Mode Linux, Vserver, or even just BSD jails.
That way those who want to do so could mess around with anything they desire without much risk to the host. Give people the freedom to mess with things, and chances are some of them will find interesting things to do.
Having root access on a dedicated server is really nice, and it can be difficult for the average university student to manage on their own. (Sure, dynamic host name forwarding and so on have made running a server from home fairly cheap, but for many students living in a tiny room with only a laptop it isn't really feasible to run your own machine without first having a good reason for it.)
Of course capping network access, disk space, cpu time, etc are all perfectly reasonable things to do in such a situation - and it might be a good idea to regularly scan for things like badly configured mail servers. You'd have to think carefully about how to assign either IPs or NAT port forwarding, but assuming only a few hundreds of students take you up on it, it shouldn't be impossible to come up with something both useful and unlikely to piss off the university brass.
Setting it up as an opt-in service would probably cut down on administrative headaches. Only the few percent of students who would take advantage of the service would be likely to ask for it.
Finally, one other random idea: set up a couple of individual machines for non-grant-funded personal computation projects. Let students apply for time, perhaps with mini-proposals conducted through some existing undergrad research program. There are probably plenty of senior thesis projects that could make good use of even modest computational resources.
Over here at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam we have 'computation servers'. Any CS/AI student can log in and use the 4-way SMP machines for their studies (and let me say that this is a real help when running CPU-intensive algorithms that otherwise would take weeks to complete). Bigger iron like the old DAS cluster with it's 200 nodes is used for parallel-programming, distributed systems courses and more serious applications.
If you don't know what to do with it, hand it to graduate students that need the cycles.
This sig is intentionally left blank
vpns - a lot more then what your proably willing to offer, but it is a good way to get administration practice and it lets people try all aspects of having a server. but i am sure if you some how managed to do this you would be reimaging a lot
Network Drives. Anything I have on my university network drive I can access from anywhere that has an internet connection. It isn't much (just a couple hundred MB), but is often just as easy as using a USB drive. It's accessable through ftp and Net Storage, Novell's online client, and also through Novell's desktop client (although this last method is not endorsed by the IT staff, and therefore receives no support when things go bad). A number of applications are hosted on other drives as well, accessable from lab computers (or home computers with Novell installed). All data is stored in at least triplicate, possibly even more redundant, as the main harddrives are RAIDed, and backed up nightly off-site (which is actually still on campus, just the opposite end).
Why not provide the school with there own online broadcasts or video broadcasts?
I am sure the schools/colleges run clubs who will enjoy having there own ways of giving out information and radio is one of them.
If you don't have any use for it, let the CS majors use it. They NEED those cycles and storage. The students-at-large probably don't. They can get all those services for free from some other website.
Why try to re-invent the wheel (and then have to *support* that wheel)?
What I'm saying is, make all the stuff you currently have work better, maybe add a feature that people have been asking about, but don't bother with stuff that you don't need.
In my University, we have an IT degree course where one of the units is on Computer Operating Systems (naturally) and while we have a superb internet connection, excellent PCs...a generally good setup, all the PCs are purely Windows machines so the majority of us haven't even SEEN a linux/OS X/unix interface let alone used one. Apparently these guys have some kind of contract with an IT firm locally or something, or maybe they fear the anticipated maintenance costs of hundreds of PCs...I don't know. I don't know how other unis fare at this but I highly doubt this to be the case in many other places. I just wish we had some open machines here that we could work on.
:/
For that matter, are there any linux, unix or OS X simulators we can download? Maybe that'd get some of us up to speed! After all, they're pretty thorough enough with the theory...
How about some LTSP servers for use by the campus accomodated students? These hard up students may not be able to afford all the office productivity softwares they require and a machine to run it on. At least this way students can have old computers donated to them and still access the web, office productivity software and email. Add a network printer /scanner per accomodation block and they have all they will need for everyday use.
access?! Where in BFE are you from? As, I can't remember seeing a single real university that doesn't already provide such services to faculty, staff, and students as part of their job/attendance.
/. existed to get? Sheesh, even then I can't think of any reasonable university that didn't already have all of those services. Geez the university where I was at was even it's own ILEC on University property and other temporary locations that faculty, staff, or students were emplaced... We had SLIP access in the late 80s, and PPP by 1992(IIRC), granted neither were easy to setup under M$DO$, Window$, or even MUCH MUCH worse BSD/Linux at the time. (I was an earlier adopter(of PPP), so I pre-dated any practical documentation, but as I was in a technical degree program I was used to getting things running on my own, including writing drivers and other pieces to glue things together until something better came along... Even more fun was had figuring out how to setup and X sessions remotely, and how relatively trivial it turned out to be once you had all the pieces... and how freaking slow it was over pokey dialup(14.4kbps). (This is still even pre-28kbps days... borked windows/dos serial interface libraries, usually had to go straight to BIOS calls.. or lower... if the BIOS was borked as well...))
Are you sure this isn't a story that someone travelled back into the time be
You can then cname ..
www.mydomain.com -> my-Imac.myDepartment.u-of-something.edu
When you leave the university then you can then just copy the files off of my-Imac, and install them on a proper shared hosting server or set up your own colo'ed machine, or whatever suits your fancy.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.