I am sorry I wasn't more clear-- I was only trying to emphasize that this server would not be hooked directly to the Internet-- it will behind a hardware firewall and have no ports open to the Internet. I am concerned with internal hacking, but we're just K-8, and plans call for the lab the kids use to be put a different subnet from the teachers and office.

In addition, we will initially use the SIS for only for attendance, then add grade reporting to the office, and there will be no highly sensitive info on it. When the school sees the value in the system, we will raise money to get a better system (if necessary) and hire someone to do a security audit and help us secure it.

It's all baby steps to slow progress around here. Teachers just finally got e-mail this year.

Thanks

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Baby steps is good.

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Too bad Life was soooo much easier without it.

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Not knowing what you do you can make *x more insecure than win98. e.g. by doing samba shares, printing, NIS and by giving wrong permissions.

Any distro probably would not have too many problems to run that. Get a good processor and at least a gig of memory. If you want to get into extreme out of processor get sources and compile against your hardware, you can get 5-10% performance increase. But for that amount even rpm will be more than sufficient.

Just exit out from xwindows after you are done and you'll release lots of memory or use ssh.

Good luck.

Gediminas

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I understand what you mean, but really, running down to the office to get notes was tedious and inefficient. Teachers can now also do web research from their desks instead of coming to the lab. Parents nowadays want to be able to e-mail teachers and BE e-mailed when students miss work, but we've already had parents e-mailing upset comments about their little angels, so some of the teachers don't want their addresses publicized!

That will change... it will have to. It's the new reality of school life-- the kids are always right, the teachers are always wrong, and the parents are always ready to complain - directly via e-mail.

T

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Now that is beyond me... :)