Home Intranet

[pigdog]

Hi,

Has anybody tried this?  Has it worked out?

I was wondering...

for those who have LinuxMCE acting as a home network gateway  (internet/dsl modem> LinuxMCE/dhcp> wife/kids PC's)...

would running an intranet web page be feasible?

I thought 'wouldn't it be nice to have a default home page on everyone's web browser where we could have family stuff'.

It's more of a scheduling thing.  Who's doing what this day of the month, soccer(football) games/times/fields, who's taking who where?  Birthdays, work schedules, etc.

It seems that summer time is harder to manage now that's there's swimming lessons, we've been asked to visit so and so at their cottage on such and such a day, BBQ invites, local festivals, when can we get time to go fishing, etc.

Having the family site pop up every time you to try to go on-line might hopefully avoid scheduling conflicts, 'WHAT? YOU FORGOT?' being yelled at me, etc.

I have looked at http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/How_to_setup_Local_Authoritative_DNS

Thanks.

[merkur2k]

seems interesting.
however, i would be inclined just to set all the clients to use "http://dcerouter/" as their homepage (or some sub folder therof), and install whatever scheduling software or whatever you had in mind on the core.

[colinjones]

yep, set the home page... on PCs you can easily edit the LGPO (Local Group Policy Object) to enforce this for all existing and future user profiles, and to lock it down so that it cannot be changed. Then look for some OSS groupware web server that can be dropped into the core's default web folders.

EDIT:

Realised that many people will not know how to do this, so for the record. I couldn't find the standard GPO editor on XP, that is installed by default on server OS's, but it is easy to create it.

Go to Start->Run, and type mmc <enter>

This will open an MMC management console, blank, ie with no management snap-ins. Now choose File->Add/Remove Snap-in and a dialogue box will open.

Choose Add and select Group Policy Object Editor, and Add again. A new dialogue will open with the Group Policy Object defaulting to Local Computer, just accept that and choose Finish, Close, Cancel to get back.

You will now see the LGPO in the left pane. You can navigate to User Configuration->Windows Settings->Internet Explorer Maintenance->URLs. Then choose and edit the Important URLs entry... this includes the Home page URL.

This policy will apply to everyone on that computer (current or future), and gets reapplied every 30-90 mins, so if someone/thing changes the home page, it will automatically get switched back. Only Administrators can change the GPOs so ensure your kids are no more than power users (should really be just users anyway!) There other policies that you can set to ensure that the Home page URL is not even writable in IE if you are a complete control freak!

[pigdog]

Hi colinjones,

The LGPO part I hadn't considered.  Thanks for pointing that out.

My #1 son has a triple boot Fedora 10, XP & Windows 7 system.  # 2 son only XP (only 10 yrs).

Wife has Ubuntu.  I've got a 98 system and a Fedora 11 and WIN2kPro dual boot.

Then my Core/Hybrid & 2 MD's.

I'll have to read some more about LGPO 'cuz I thought it was more 'Windows' oriented.

However, I wanted something where the users (wife & sons) could have a blogsphere, or something, where they could log into the family webpage.

Then they would be responsible to enter their 'stuff', limited to their work area (kinda like Drupal can do) and I could see what they had, take that info and populate the calendar.

Scheduling conflicts would show up right away and have to be worked out.

If they failed to inform, (their fault), whatever got scheduled - was!

Thanks again.

[NikAmi]

Or, more easily, just rummage up a crappy old computer throw DSL on it, add LAMP, and set everyone's homepage to the IP of that server.

[tschak909]

Let's actually try to integrate an intranet site into LinuxMCE for this purpose. After all LinuxMCE is a Smart Home Platform.

-Thom

[merkur2k]

This is a good suggestion, and probably pretty easy to implement. However I don't have much experience with this kind of software.
What kinda stuff would be usefull? Project/product names or just a general description of what it needs to do would be helpfull.

[chriss]

However I don't have much experience with this kind of software.
What kinda stuff would be usefull? Project/product names or just a general description of what it needs to do would be helpfull.

This basically needs a webserver to deliver the content to the clients. You can use Apache, it's already there for delivering the admin site. Create a new site within apache and you're done with that part. There's a lot of tutorials out there.

Secondly there has to be a (smart) way to get content into the site. Maybe some standard stuff delivered by the system, maybe by enabling the users to modify the content...

[merkur2k]

Yes, I am quite aware of the technical requirements, I had assumed that we were still talking about web based software, so thats what i was asking about; stuff that can be installed in an existing web server environment.
At the basic level, something like a wiki. stuff like that.

[NikAmi]

I would think that a full featured webserver integration with a few pre-packaged tools would really enhance the LMCE software. For instance, in my mind, a good combo would be a photo organizing software such as Plogger, a CMS for random notes/diaries/blogs/etc., and a pre-installed/configured Open-Xchange implementation. This would be a great tool for managing scheduling, emailing, addressing, etc. for the household.

[pigdog]

Hi,

LinuxMCE 810 has all the prerequistes to install the latest version of Drupal 6.12

Code: [Select]

wget http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/drupal-6.12.tar.gz
tar xvzf drupal-6.12.tar.gz
sudo mkdir /var/www/drupal
sudo mv drupal-6.12/* drupal-6.12/.htaccess /var/www/drupal


It is required to create a files subdirectory in your drupal default site installation directory.

It will be used for files such as custom logos, user avatars, and other site media.


mkdir /var/www/drupal/sites/default/files
chown www-data:www-data /var/www/drupal/sites/default/files


It is also required to create the initial configuration file for the default site.


cp /var/www/drupal/sites/default/default.settings.php /var/www/drupal/sites/default/settings.php
chown www-data:www-data /var/www/drupal/sites/default/settings.php


Drupal needs a database, user and password

You need to create a drupal database and then load the database schema into it.


mysqladmin -u root -p create drupal


Where [i]drupal[/i] is the name you picked for the mysql database that Drupal will use. You can call it anything you want.


Enter password:     (LinuxMCE has no mySQL password just hit Enter)


mysql -u root -p


Enter password:     (LinuxMCE has no mySQL password just hit Enter)


mysql> GRANT SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, CREATE, DROP, INDEX, ALTER, CREATE TEMPORARY TABLES, LOCK TABLES ON drupal.* TO 'drupaluser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'drupalpass';


You do not want to have Drupal use the mysql root user to access the database.

The above command creates a mysql user (other than the mysql root user) with some priviledges to use the drupal database.

You should pick something different than [i]drupaluser [/i]and [i]drupalpass[/i].

If the command was successful you get a response like,


Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)


activate the new permissions:


mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;


Response:


Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)


Quit the mysql prompt:


mysql> \q


I rebooted at this point to see if anything was broken.  Everthing seemed O.K.
I manually ran the cron job and it worked. 

Now I need to see if things will work out to use Drupal for  my home intranet.

[pigdog]

The most recent version is now 6.13.

Drupal has to be manually upgraded and seems to break a lot.

I found this site that has a script file but it (script) probably needs to be tweeked to handle individual requirements.

http://justin-hayes.com/2008-12-10/drupal-automatic-upgrade-script