On 27 Nov 2005, in the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.linux.setup, in article
<1133103091.860200.145000@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups .com>, Kronocide wrote:

>As stated above there is of course a time limit, and no limit at all to
>the amount of stuff I'd like to teach.

I hear it.

>I wish I could teach them all about init, but that's just not possible. I
>also do not want to make my instructions so abstract they become
>meaningless. My lesson on getting Apache to start from boot shouldn't be,
>"Learn how your distro works. Configure it correctly." They don't need me
>to tell them that.

Yes, as I mention in my followup to Nico, there should be pre-requisites
for the course that include using _something_ as an editor, having some
concept of how to use man pages, etc. Running a server insecurely is
easy to "teach" - microsoft does it by default. The Linux distributions
have worked hard to escape that mentality. If you don't have the
experience, in the mid-1990s, if there was a cracked Linux box out there,
it was usually running daemons galore, _out_of_box, with NO thought of
security. Hate to recall how many Red Hat boxes of yore were exploited
as open spam servers with a wide open Sendmail install. That has changed.

>What I'll do is have them go through the motions of compiling and
>installing a standard Apache distro

That _might_ be a bit much - compiling is not a ten minute lesson either.

>then they can choose if they want to reinstall using their package
>manager

I know we're pushed for time, but it's generally preferable to have them
use the package manager - yes, it's another long story.

>or figure out their init config.

Remember that most distribution specific tools are just helping to
configure the "normal" script/config-files for a daemon. If they know
where/what the normal configurations are, they're ahead. As for trying
to teach the ninety-nine different helper tools provided by the various
distributions - good luck.

>I will point them to the KSysV handbook, which contains a short,
>principal explanation of init, and also to the HOWTO recommended
>above (thanks!) for more in-depth information.

As mentioned, just giving them an oversight of the way things start is
going to go a long way. The HOWTOs, the LDP guides, etc, are a great
source of extra information - I know students don't like homework, but
it shows them the extensive information that's available.

Old guy

Kronocide writes:
> What I'll do is have them go through the motions of compiling and
> installing a standard Apache distro...

If you are short on time this is one the things you should leave out.

> ...then they can choose if they want to reinstall using their package
> manager...

Installing the deb or rpm supplied with the distribution _is_ the "standard
way". Have the do that and learn to configure Apache, and then let them
mess around with compiling if there is time.

--
John Hasler
john@dhh.gt.org
Dancing Horse Hill
Elmwood, WI USA