Officers of the Human Capital Development Group of CICT attended a two-hour
orientation on Eminima during its monthly brown bag seminar held on
July 8, 2005 2:00 - 4:00 PM at Computer Lab 1 of NCC.
Dr. Rufino Mananghaya, Eminima proponent and host of eMinima.org, started the session by loading the Eminima server miniCD in one of the computers of the laboratory. Then he briefed the participants about how current software has become not only portable but also very easy to use. To emphasize his point, he showed the participants the miniCD used in starting the server.
The speaker spent a few minutes explaining how community software has evolved, in particular its being very different from proprietary or corporate software. He emphasized that community software is mostly licensed with GPL (General Public License), a legal instrument that allows users the freedom to use and modify software, but also requires them to make the resulting new software freely distributed, too.
With the introduction over, the participants quickly turned to hands-on exercises. They were taught how to:
- Access the server - this is usually 192.168.0.100 in a small network (but the number used in the hands-on is 192.168.101.100, following the lab numbering system);
- Access the owner's or admin page, 192.168.101.100/em/em.php, from where it is possible to create/edit web pages, upload pictures or other files, and create tests.
The participants were writing web pages and creating quizzes in no time
at all, and were helping each other in inserting links, images and
tests in pages.
In summing up the activity, Dr. Mananghaya assured the participants that the software is free, but the users will have to study how to use it at work. He made the following list of reminders:
- User shall command "slax server" at boot-time when the miniCD is used to start the PC; previously saved data (confsave.tgz saved with configsave) will be automatically loaded at boot time;
- A USB stick is best used to save all work done by the user, just command "configsave" at the console (black screen) and point to the USB device as "/dev/sda1";
- FAT-formatted hard disks (in Windows) allow saving to hard disk, which is "/dev/hda1" when doing "configsave". Within Slax (the Linux suite), the hard disk is named "/mnt/disc0part1";
- NTFS-formatted hard disks (in Windows XP) is not accessible yet to most Linux versions, but this will change in the near future;
- For client software suite, Puppy Linux at goosee.com/puppy is recommended - this can be downloaded easily as it is only about 60 MB;
- Creating a new miniCD with updated content is described in the documentation - just insert the EM/Slax server miniCD to a running PC and the guide will be automatically displayed. In Windows, Magic ISO may be used to modify the contents of the EM server ISO - only the file www.img has to be saved from the server via the console command "makeimg";
- The EM server ISO and the Puppy ISO are contained in the CD given to the HCDG Office. Those software may be updated in the future, but changes will be made available at eMinima.org. Users/partners are enjoined to enlist at eMinima.org/fellows.
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