HowTo: manage updates to Ubuntu offline, via memory key or CD/DVD?

[Leo Mauler]

--- On Sat, 5/31/08, Monty J. Harder <mjharder at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sat, May 31, 2008 at 12:13 AM, Leo Mauler
> <webgiant at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> > These folks are so financially-strapped that the
> > Center doesn't even have a phone turned on (the wires 
> > are there but the phone connection isn't active),
> > let alone a broadband Internet connection.
> 
> So if a security vulnerability that is resolved by an
> update, you won't have the means to easily, and 
> automatically, patch it before someone exploits that 
> vulnerability on their server.
> 
> As soon as someone figures out how to exploit a computer
> that isn't connected to the Internet, that is.

Oddly enough it turns out that I've run into a technician's mixed blessing: a poor non-profit full of people who have wanted technology for six years.  Once I pointed out that some of the systems they have in their "donation storage room" could be used as servers, they came clean with a number of ideas and expressed the desire to add Internet to the building now that they have an actual technical person interested in volunteering time and effort.

Among their ideas (which they described using considerably less technical words): security camera footage being transmitted via the Internet to the caretaker's house; live webcam photos/video of art classes in session; WiFi hotspot for the arts center lounge; and a few other ideas.  They even have everything needed for a recording studio, though I've had a look at the equipment and I think they need a sound engineer in to take a look at the recording equipment donated by a local radio station.

There's not a lot of funding for these ideas, so we may end up actually implementing the WiFi VPN WAN using sheet metal parabolic dish antennas that I mentioned as a "possibility".  There's a spot at the edge of the property nearest to the caretaker to put in a passive WiFi repeater on a permanent pole, to strengthen the signal.