Kidsnet Revisions
From Kidsnet Support Wiki
This article discusses the many incarnations of Kidsnet and its predecessors.
Contents |
Introduction
Although new Kidsnet labs are being built from scratch on a regular basis, the concepts behind these labs - and the network that supports them - have been years in the making. The software, hardware, and strategies being used in the labs today have their roots in a small group of machines assembled back in the year 2000, which grew by leaps and bounds into what today is known as Kidsnet.
Status
The Kidsnet specification currently in use is Kidsnet 2.2.
In the next 12 to 18 months, Kidsnet 3.0 is expected to be completed. This new specification is expected to consist mainly of technical improvements, and will likely call for a major network overhaul to add support for IPv6, among other things.
Prehistory: Lone Pine
- Rolled Out: sometime in 1998
The story all begins with the Lone Pine Community Center. If you don't already know what Lone Pine is, you should read its article first.
In the beginning (1998), Lone Pine started out with a half dozen mismatched computers set up to run games and homework-related software. These machines eventually broke down. Local tech Keith Thelen came and repaired the machines, and later set up a small LAN to allow sharing of the Center's Internet service.
Lone Pine LAN, version 1
- Rolled Out: June, 2000
After Thelen began working at the Center on a regular basis, the network was made more useful with the addition of a small file and mail server. This was refined into a small but very operable network, with as many as eight workstations at its peak. Everything was based on Microsoft Windows at that time.
This network won the county and State 4-H awards for Best in Show (Purple Ribbon) in 2001.
Lone Pine LAN, version 2
- Rolled Out: June, 2002
A move to the back room, the migration to Macs, and the addition of wireless broadband from NCIS signified the roll-out of Lone Pine's second major network revision. The initial configuration used a Power Mac 7100 running AppleShare IP as server and four assorted Mac desktops for patrons to use; newer machines were added as time went by.
Significant features included the addition of user accounts, which co-incided with existing offerings of storage and email; a website for the Center and webspace for patrons; and real remote access options for patrons and staff (including the Lone Pine @ Home program).
Lone Pine's second network also marked the beginning of a new tradition: using custom-made themed graphics for promotional materials and on the systems themselves. This version was characterized by the inital Three Colors and the Spruce Stripe, while the website sported a blue and white, Aqua-esque look.
This network won the county and State 4-H awards for Best in Show (Purple Ribbon) in 2002, and also played a key part in earning Thelen the Kohl's Cares local, regional, and national awards in 2003.
Lone Pine LAN, version 3
- Rolled Out: October, 2003
- Completed: July, 2004
After the Kohl's business was over with, Lone Pine was left to decide what to do with the retailer's donation. The obvious choice was to buy newer computers, and that they did - four iMacs were delivered in August of 2003, and were being prepared immediately thereafter. The plan was to run Mac OS X on the new iMacs.
But significant problems arose during the implementation of Version 3. The iMacs lacked the needed RAM to run new applications, so upgrades had to be performed (a slow process when no money is available). Updated versions of many applications also had to be obtained. Significant amounts of user data had to be migrated from AppleShare IP to Mac OS X Server. And on top of all that, Thelen had moved out of town and been working severely reduced hours, and Lone Pine itself was to be moved across town "any day now".
The implementation went very slowly, and once it finally was rolled out its days were already numbered - the move downtown would bring about a major overhaul of the systems for MYInet version 1, causing much of the work that went into Version 3 to become obsolete.
The last version to bear the Lone Pine logo and name, Version 3 was characterized by the semi-transparent Big Spruce against the original three colors. Meanwhile, the website took on the blue and green palatte that is still in use today.
Kidsnet version 1 (MYInet)
- Rolled Out: July, 2005
- MISnT Name: Lone Pine v3 Town-Wide
After Lone Pine's move downtown, the two other youth destinations with computer labs (Cornerstone and Family Pathways) were physically much closer - close enough to be connected to Lone Pine, some mused.
It seemed to be a logical step to connect the other two centers to Lone Pine, since the Center's attendee numbers were on the decline but their "backbone" equipment was still going strong. Within a month, the three centers were interconnected and had formed MYInet, the Mora Youth Intranet.
Knowledge and equipment that was built up over the last five years of Lone Pine experimentation lent themselves well to the new town-wide network - wireless networking, single sign-on, cross-platform applications, and many other MISnT contributions played key roles in building up MYInet.
In October, the Powers That Be caused a shift in the structure of the network. While the City was becoming less and less interested in keeping Lone Pine afloat, Pathways was looking to expand their part of the system into other towns. Planning began for the support of this new layout, and a new name and domain - mnkids.net - was adopted to relieve the system of its ties to the City.
The earliest stages of v3 Town-Wide bore the Lone Pine branding from Version 3 in all the labs, and used an orange color scheme for the town-wide website (Lone Pine's site remained unchanged).
People at the various "branch labs" complained about the lack of significant differentiation caused by the end-to-end Lone Pine branding (all the websites, graphics, posters, etc. carried the Big Spruce logo and Lone Pine name; only machine host names and other subtle documentation reflected the labs' individual identities). Although the Lone Pine techs were aware of the situation and had planned to brand each lab individually, the technical demands of the network proved greater than they initially predicted, and so the creation of new materials had to be postponed until the development of Kidsnet v1.1.
Kidsnet version 1.1 (Kidsnet)
- Rolled Out: November, 2005
Towards the end of the summer of 2005, the Lone Pine people had finally settled down to put the finishing touches on MNKidsNet. But Murphy's Law once again reared its ugly head, and the big news dropped: Lone Pine's final day had been chosen. Chaos ensued.
Lone Pine's director, Paula Vanecek, had taken a job at Family Pathways, and so it was a given that the kids and equipment would follow her there. As such, the tech staff also followed suit - within a few days the network had been re-routed to accomidate Pathways' new role, and the contents of the Lone Pine server room came over shortly thereafter. Initially things seemed quite nice under the new arrangement; Pathways had much more space to offer, was pre-wired for Ethernet throughout, had their own DSL and POTS circuits, was covered by a very accomidating roof (for the WiFi antenna farm), and facilities-wise was just much nicer in general. Best of all, it seemed that the management wanted nothing more than to expand the network - which was good news for head tech Keith Thelen, who wanted nothing more than a few good clients for his new business.
Sweeping changes in the system's administration and methodoligies began immediately. Linux became the platform of choice for all lab workstations (Macs were still supported to a lesser degree; Windows was not supported, or even permitted). New hardware was installed in many places, a first for the MISnT people who were used to the tecnological equivalent of banging rocks together. Capacity was built up for the addition of more towns to the system. And on top of it all, the name and imaging of the system was changed - from then forward, it was just Kidsnet. Each lab also got its own branding.
The Pathways lab was built up into a regular flagship, a model for future build-outs in other Pathways locations. Big promises were made for a roll-out of two, three, or maybe even more labs in the immediate future. And planning had begun for Thelen's firm to sell Kidsnet to Pathways (and possibly other agencies) as a hosted service, thus reducing maintainence costs.
But when the Day of Judgement came, the tech staff got a rude awakening: some key Pathways managers didn't really know, and - in the opinion of some - didn't seem overly concerned about, what was going on with Kidsnet. To make matters worse, one Pathways employee (who shall remain nameless) had begun spreading rumors throughout the organization, causing them to distrust Thelen and his company, and eventually brought various accusations in his direction. It was at that time that Thelen, founding member and five-year veteran of MISnT, threw in the towel. The few others that had been involved in MISnT followed shortly thereafter, thus ending the department's boom of an era.
Website branding for Kidsnet v1.1 included shades of brown and many distinctive new graphics, which displaced all former Lone Pine branding (except where maintained for archival purposes). The labs themselves were responsible for creating their own materials, to which they could add the "Member of Kidsnet" badge to show their association with the system. Pathways' Mora lab chose the name FireWire, and obtained a logo and various other graphics from Thelen to go with it.
Kidsnet version 2
- Rolled Out: November, 2006
After MISnT's untimely endings, Kidsnet experienced a great shake-up. The remnants of the Lone Pine system were taken out of service. Cornerstone reverted to local operation. And the Pathways lab, which was picked up by CMC, was torn apart and eventually flipped to Windows and semi-local operation. But between the limited amount of time the CMC volunteers had to offer and the misguided expectations of some other lab staff, the system quickly crumbled and became a mere shadow of what it had once been.
Several months passed in this fashion. User numbers (and general attendance) went down as time went by.
Fortuantely for the system and its users, a major staffing change took place in the fall of '06: Vanecek was reassigned to another town, leaving the second-in-command (Rachel Ostler) as the new manager of the Mora center and lab. Before long she was in contact with Thelen, who (with slight reluctance) agreed to come in and assess the situation.
Thelen, who claimed to be 'somewhat surprised and disgusted' with the state of the system, proceeded to begin restoring it. Within a few weeks most of the hardware and software was back to its former state, and after a month or so obvious progress was being made on top of that. Several weeks of testing and tweaking the system's various components followed, and shortly thereafter Thelen declared it all to be "good".
The new Mora lab was a departure from the original design. Technology-wise, it was vastly different due to the use of a single terminal server driving many Xterminals (rather than many PCs with synchronized configurations), and also due to the shift from a mix of Red Hat and Debian to an all-SuSE environment. Concept-wise, it was also quite different from the original - the new Kidsnet was to be a Family Pathways owned/operated system that would use their existing intranet backbone and service only its programs.
Kidsnet 2 kept the imaging from Kidsnet 1.1, mainly because no one had the time or energy available to change it.
Kidsnet version 2.1
- Rolled Out: February, 2007
Kidsnet 2 was a big upgrade to be sure, but there were more changes afoot: Pathways was once again entertaining the idea of expanding Kidsnet to its other locations.
The infrastructure had to be built up to support the extra load of multiple towns - which in itself was quite the task for the Kidsnet support people, considering that the Mora lab's services couldn't be interrupted during the expansion.
The Mora lab was once again made into the flagship, using more and nicer-looking equipment and furniture, and having additional features (such as multimedia capabilities) that would be optional in other labs. Mora was also designated to be the site of the Kidsnet datacenter, which would host all the shared servers and other common components that would be available by wire to every lab on the network.
Many other more subtle changes were also made to accomidate the addition of more towns to the system - everything from manual pages and signage to addressing and hostnames were adjusted to make more sense in the new WAN environment.
Upon completion of Kidsnet 2.1, the Kidsnet support people took a deep breath, sat down in their new machine room, and started drawing. Within a few hours, a full set of new graphics had been created for the network. The new materials used colors and designs similar to the old ones and maintained the old sizes and specs to accomidate drop-in usage, but were easily distinguisable as being more stylized and sketch-like than the old ones. Also new was the "paper dolls" illustration, a feature which served as a common element among all the new graphics.
Kidsnet version 2.2
- Rolled Out: September, 2008
During its year and a half of daily service in the labs, Kidsnet 2.1 had begun to show a few weaknesses that weren't addressed in the original Kidsnet 2 specs. Various "band-aid" type fixes were made as needed, and the network continued to function. But it became increasingly obvious that a "clean start" would be needed as the number of patches continued to rise - not just because of the need for permanent solutions to the various problems, but also because it was becoming more and more difficult to build new terminal servers from scratch. Replacement and consolidation of several key servers had only added to the amount of hacks and other retrofitting in place.
The much-needed "clean start" came in late August of 2008, when Mora became the first lab to begin testing a package based on the Kidsnet 2.2 spec. Significant changes included:
- Processor and memory requirements for the terminal servers were doubled (first new unit was a Compaq Proliant ML380 with two 2.8GHz processors and 2GB of RAM)
- OpenSuSE 10.3 was now the platform of choice, replacing the aging SuSE Enterprise 10.0
- An all-encompassing script now handled every aspect of modifying clean SuSE installs for Kidsnet use
- The traditional LTSP 4.2 had been displaced by a highly modified version of LTSP 5 ("MueKow")
- The thin clients' root filesystem was now stored on squashfs images and shared via NBD, instead of the old NFS-based system
- Due to several lingering bugs (including a rather serious XDMCP issue), GDM had been replaced by a customized version of XDM
- The new client (pmterm) and admin (quickreg) applications for the Patron Membership Card system were installed by default
- New administration tools were added, including whole-lab monitoring and control (via TeacherTool and VNC) and several new account management features
Kidsnet 2.2 also called for higher minimum versions of several software packages. Among them were XFCE (X.X), Firefox (3.0), and OpenOffice (X.X). Several new tweaks were implemented in the default XFCE config per user requests. GAIM was no longer offered, and a number of small games and amusements were added.
Due to the replacement of GDM, the default Kidsnet login graphics were re-designed. The backdrop, which was limited to using the lab's official color and three darker or lighter shades thereof, now included a legal notice (roughly the same as the one seen in /etc/issue) and a rendition of the lab's logo. The "paper dolls" element used in GDM was reduced in size to accommodate the new login box's dimensions, but was otherwise left unchanged.
Another notable addition in Kidsnet 2.2 was a recommendation that all labs install a color laser printer. Mora promptly acquired and installed an HP Color LaserJet 5MP, while Stacy bought a new Color LaserJet 2600n.
