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Managing Linux in an
Engineering College
A Case Study

My opinions are my own.
The Lawyers Made Me Do It

About Me
Jason Edgecombe (@edgester)
● Linux Administrator in the College of
Engineering at UNC Charlotte
● OpenAFS contributor & buildbot admin
● http://engrmosaic.uncc.edu
● https://github.com/edgester
● http://rampaginggeek.com

The William States Lee College of
Engineering at UNC Charlotte
● 5 Departments
o Civil and Environmental Engineering
o Electrical and Computer Engineering
o Engineering Technology
o Mechanical Engineering and Engineering Science
o Systems Engineering and Engineering Management
● Various research centers (EPIC)

College Stats
● 3322 Students who major in COE (Fall 2014)
o 2710 undergrad, 612 grad
● 154 faculty (140 FTE), 60 staff FTE
● 4342 login accounts (May 2015)
● 10 person IT team (full-time) + student
interns
● 2 Linux admins

What We Support
● 2 Managed platforms
o Mosaic Windows
 1200+ Mosaic windows machines
o Mosaic Linux
 41 production servers
(mix of bare-metal and VM’s)
 65 Linux desktops (offices and research labs)
 141 total Linux machines (that we manage)
● Assorted standalone boxes (research)

What We DON’T Maintain
● The main campus network
● Primary departmental/college web sites
● Research compute cluster
● Other stuff provided by university-level IT
● Moodle
● Campus ERP systems

Mosaic Linux Platform
● 50+ commercial and open source software
suites
● RedHat Enterprise Linux 5 (Client & Server)
● Only IT staff have root/sudo
● OpenAFS for network storage
(Linux & Windows)

Key Philosophies
● High level of customer service
● Lots of automation
o Scripted installation and management.
(little or no imaging)
● Store everything in AFS (Windows & Linux)
o Roaming profiles and home directories
● Workstations and servers are disposable
o Primary disks must not contain persistent user data

Remote Access
● Current: 10 servers, 8C/16T, 96GB RAM
● Future: 2 servers, 8C/64T, 256GB RAM
● Remote graphical and ssh access
● Today: FreeNX over globally-accessible ssh
port
● Near Future: Xrdp and ssh behind the VPN
● Used by on-site and off-site users

Current Automation
● Kickstart automated installation
● Masterless cfengine w/AFS to distribute files
● Scripts (Bash, Perl, Python)
● Git for VCS and moving code changes
between environments
● Folders of RPMs to designate patchsets
(separate from git)

Future Automation/Platform
● RHEL7
● RedHat Satellite (Puppet, Katello, Foreman, Pulp)
○ Use lifecycle environments to promote
Dev→Test→Prod
○ Content views to synchronize puppet modules and
RPMs
○ Reduce the dependency on a shared file system for
our management tools

Ongoing Challenges & Responses
● Usual suspects: budget & staff time
○ Automate and streamline
○ Engage stakeholders to set priorities
○ Interns for some stuff
● Growth (12% student growth 2009-2014)
○ Automate
○ Set priorities
● Bimodal user populations
○ Set expectations per application

Ongoing Challenges & Responses 2
● Users want root/sudo (especially Elec. Eng.)
○ Better customer service
○ Make the managed offering irresistible
● Need to support centralized and distributed
usage models
○ Users can choose their support model
○ Support both with a hybrid team

Ongoing Challenges & Responses 3
● Divergent application requirements
○ Install dependencies in separate folders with
applications
○ Can’t always fix this. Can Docker help?
● Semi-trusted network
○ Assume the attackers are inside the machines!
○ Run fail2ban on workstations
○ Be wary of applications that have little/no security

Challenges Yet To Be Conquered!
● Research
○ Special requirements that can’t be handled by the
managed offering. (security & technical)
● Storage (More!)
● Security
○ Risk of more one-offs
○ Belligerent users
● Consolidation?

The Future Is Uncertain
● Looking to replace our:
o Network file system
o User Directory
o Backup system
● Docker
● Cloud
● Continuous Delivery
○ automated testing, logging, metrics

Discussion
http://engrmosaic.uncc.edu

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