Friday, May 16, 2008

An Almost Edubuntu Nightmare

Tomorrow, Free Geek Central Florida will be installing the Edubuntu LTSP system in the Interventions Unlimited school. I'm looking forward to it.

But, last night, I was sweating it.

Wednesday or Thursday, a bunch of updates came through for Ubuntu. One of those was a security update for openssh. As usually, I installed all the updates. But, from experience I decided to test the server/client. I set up one of the clients, booted into the server, and all seemed well. At first.

The Ubuntu login screen appeared. I entered the user name, then the password. Then.....nothing. I just said, "Verifying Password. Please wait...." I did just that. I waited. And waited. And waited. No login happened.

By now, I was on the edge of a slight panic attack. Not of of my full blown freakouts that happen when all my patterns change at once, but a "Oh NO! I'm going to have to stay up all freakin night!" panics.

I quickly searched the Ubuntu Forums, and found a post with the same problem. There was no answer, so I bumped the question up by dittoing the problem for myself. Within 5-10 minutes, there was a reply and a solution, from someone in Melborne Australia. I followed the instructions, rebooted the server and the client, and the login worked.

Disaster and a sleepless night averted.

We'll be taking pictures of the installation. I'll post them here, and on the Free Geek Central Florida Blog.

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