- Title
- Leveraging LTSP to deploy a sustainable e-infrastructure for poor communities in South Africa
- Creator
- Zvidzayi, Tichaona Manyara
- ThesisAdvisor
- Terzoli, Alfredo
- ThesisAdvisor
- Dlodlo, Nomusa
- Subject
- Linux Terminal Server Project
- Subject
- Network computers
- Subject
- Thin client
- Subject
- Fat client
- Subject
- Cyberinfrastructure
- Subject
- Poverty reduction
- Date
- 2022-10-14
- Type
- Academic theses
- Type
- Master's theses
- Type
- text
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10962/365577
- Identifier
- vital:65761
- Description
- Poverty alleviation is one of the main challenges the South African government is facing. Information and knowledge are key strategic resources for both social and economic development, and nowadays they most often rely on Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). Poor communities have limited or no access to functioning e-infrastructure, which underpins ICT. The Siyakhula Living Lab (SLL) is a joint project between the universities of Rhodes and Fort Hare that has been running for over 15 years now. The SLL solution is currently implemented in schools in the Eastern Cape’s Dwesa-Mbhashe municipality as well as schools in Makhanda (formerly Grahamstown). Over the years, a number of blueprints for the meaningful connection of poor communities was developed. The research reported in this thesis sought to review and improve the Siyakhula Living Lab (SLL) blueprint regarding fixed computing infrastructure (as opposed to networking and applications). The review confirmed the viability of the GNU/Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP) based computing infrastructure deployed in schools to serve the surrounding community. In 2019 LTSP was redesigned and rewritten to improve on the previous version. Amongst other improvements, LTSP19+ has a smaller memory footprint and supports a graphical way to prepare and maintain the client’s image using virtual machines. These improvements increase the potential life of ICT projects implementing the SLL solution, increasing the participation of members of the community (especially teachers) to the maintenance of the computing installations. The review recommends the switching from thin clients deployments to full ("thick") clients deployments, still booting from the network and mounting their file systems on a central server. The switch is motivated by reasons that go from cost-effectiveness to the ability to survive the sudden unavailability of the central server. From experience in the previous deployment, electrical power surge protection should be mandatory. Also, UPS to protect the file system of the central server should be configured to start the shutdown immediately on electrical power loss in order to protect the life of the UPS battery (and make it possible to use cheaper UPS that report only on network power loss). The research study contributed to one real-life computing infrastructure deployment in the Ntsika school in Makhanda and one re-deployment in the Ngwane school in the Dwesa-Mbhashe area. For about two years, the research also supported continuous maintenance for the Ntsika, Ngwane and Mpume schools.
- Description
- Thesis (MSc) -- Faculty of Science, Computer Science, 2022
- Format
- computer, online resource, application/pdf, 1 online resource (181 pages), pdf
- Publisher
- Rhodes University, Faculty of Science, Computer Science
- Language
- English
- Rights
- Zvidzayi, Tichaona Manyara
- Rights
- Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons "Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike" License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/)
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RU Department of Computer Science
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | SOURCE1 | ZVIDZAYI-MSC-TR22-76.pdf | 2 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |