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Internet Cafe Software

Posted: Mon Feb 14, 2005 6:32 pm
by jmyers
I am wanting some input from you guys/gals...

I am thinking about starting an internet cafe with coffee shop within the same building.

I was thinking on using linux for a server. and windows machines for the clients.

I am trying to come up with a way, that when a customer prepays to get access or even postpay for that matter, they sit at a workstation, and log on the internet cafe software (written in php/mysql, or what ever that will work). The software allows the to gain access to the workstation and to be able to use the computer and software that is installed on the machines.

Office, Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.

of course the software will track the time they are online (on the workstation), so I guess my question is this:

Can I have a windows machine for clients and it accesses the server, which is a flavor of linux, the customer can not use it until they logon the server, which dicates if that customer is allowed or not?

or would it be better to go with an all MS setup

JM

Posted: Mon Feb 14, 2005 6:46 pm
by timvw
you first want to read documents like http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/te ... ppolwp.asp

if you only have windows clients i would choose for ms - active directory...



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currently we have all the user accounts etc in an (open)ldap server.
samba acts as a pdc and uses that ldap server as backend.

the windows clients have a proprietary msgina.dll but there are some OSS solutions like (http://pgina.xpasystems.com too. This way all the windows clients can authenticate against the ldap server.

the linux and bsd clients have pam_ldap and nss_ldap to make authenticate against the ldap server.

Posted: Mon Feb 14, 2005 6:52 pm
by jmyers
so, can you have a copy of the software on the server and the clients access the software through the server? ( I guess this would be a thin client setup)


JM

Posted: Mon Feb 14, 2005 7:04 pm
by timvw
no thin clients here :) we have an image of the data on the clients harddisk. every time the pc is booted, that image is loaded.

this way we can easily install new software on a pc, make a new image, and distribute it over all the clients.

Posted: Tue Feb 15, 2005 3:42 am
by patrikG
Moved to General Discussion.