Using Italc Lab Management Tool

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Purpose

Italc is a program that allows an instructor to control actions of a computer lab's workstation.

Some features of Italc Include:

  • Classroom Manager (Overview Mode) - Allows teacher to view all student's Desktop / Applications
  • Remote Desktop Control - Allows teacher to control the student's Desktop and lock-out student's access to computer session
  • Snapshots - Allows teacher to take snapshot of student's Desktop / Applications
  • Demo Mode - Allows teacher to broadcast their desktop session on student's computers (eg. demonstrations)
  • Wake-up-on-LAN - Allows teacher to power-up all workstations
  • Shutdown Mode - Allows teacher to logout and power-down workstation's CPU.


Here is a link to the Italc WIKI (for more background information): [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITALC ]


Setup of Italc

Brief description of Getting Italc to work in LTSP

There is a lot of conflicting, sparse, and confusing information regarding the setup of the Italc application via Internet documents. It is a good idea to take a few moments and explain the general setup of Italc in LTSP.

To be completed...


Installing Italc on Server

Use the synaptic package manager to install the following programs"

  • libitalc
  • italc-master
  • italc-client

Here is a WIKI on how install applications using the Synaptic Package Manager: [ Install Applications in Ubuntu ]


Configuring Italc on Thin Client Image

The following procedure works with the Edubuntu system (with LTSP)...

Steps:

  1. Login into the administrator account.
  2. Create an account called teacher. This will be the master account to control the other accounts.
  3. Open a shell terminal.
  4. Edit the sudoers file to allow the account teacher to be able to run sudo (administrative) commands by following the steps below:
  • Type sudo visudo
  • Enter your administrator password.
  • Under the section called "# User Privilege Specification", add a line under "root ALL=(ALL) ALL" to read:
teacher ALL=(ALL) ALL
  1. Save your file by pressing CTRL-x, then press y for yes, and accept the default file pathname.
  2. Exit your shell, and logout of the administrator account.
  3. Login to your teacher account.
  4. Open a shell terminal.
  5. Enter the following Linux commands:
    • sudo addgroup italc
    • sudo adduser teacher italc
    • sudo chgrp -R italc /etc/italc/keys
    • sudo chmod -R 640 /etc/italc/keys/private
    • sudo chmod -R ug-x /etc/italc/keys/private
  6. sudo chroot /opt/ltsp/amd64
  7. apt-get update
NOTE: If you get error indicating source is restricted, then you must copy and paste the content from the
/etc/apt/sources.list file on your server to the /etc/apt-sources.list in chroot.
Then, in chroot, run apt-get update
  1. apt-get install libitalc italc-master
  2. vi /usr/share/ldm/rc.d/S20-ica-launcher
  3. Enter the following lines in this file:
#!/bin/sh
/usr/bin/ica &
true
  1. Save and exit this file.
  2. Type exit to leave chroot
  3. Update the image by issuing the command: sudo ltsp-update-image
  4. exit the terminal (shell)
  5. Startup a thin client, and login
  6. On the server launch italc master by selecting APPLICATIONS -> SYSTEM -> ITALC
  7. You should be able to create a classroom (eg LTSP), and add a computer. The IP address should correspond to the IP address of the thin client. To determine the address of the thin client, you can open a terminal (shell) and issue the who command. For example, my first thin client is 192.168.1.20