Cool Solutions – Redmine: project management

Redmine Logo

What are Cool Solutions?

At Univention we define Cool Solutions as solutions which expand UCSs with expedient and useful functions and which are deployed successfully by our customers. We regularly present these solutions in Wiki as Cool Solutions articles.

The Univention blog is a collection of the most popular Cool Solutions. Today, we will be looking at Redmine, a free project management software which we have been using in professional services for many years for internal administration and to coordinate customer projects.

UCC 3.0 Now Verified as Citrix Ready

A new major version of Univention Corporate Client (UCC), Version 3.0, was released in mid-August. Due to a problem with Citrix Receiver, however, Citrix was not fully supported in that version. Thanks to an update, it has now proved possible to resolve the issue, and complete Citrix support with UCS is now guaranteed once again.

The last release brought with it a changeover of the operating system basis from UCC 3.0 to Ubuntu 16.04 Long Term Support (LTS). The Ubuntu substructure allows users of UCC to benefit both from the large, continuously updated software selection and from the broad hardware support offered by Ubuntu’s use of the latest Linux kernel versions.

Cool Solution Moodle – For Cooperative Learning

Moodle Logo

What are “Cool Solutions”?

Cool Solutions is the name we use to describe Univention solutions which expand UCS with practical, advantageous functions and which we successfully employ for our customers. These solutions are regularly showcased in the Univention Wiki in the form of Cool Solutions articles.

In this article I would like to introduce the learning platform Moodle and its interface with UCS. At the end of this article you can also find an interview we conducted with the Chemnitz education authorities, which are currently implementing Moodle in a number of the city’s schools.

How to Integrate with LDAP: “Generic LDAP Connection”

LDAP

In the blog article series “How to integrate with LDAP”, we introduce a whole range of different options and possibilities for how the LDAP provided by UCS can be expanded or used in cooperation with other services.

In the first section of this article, “Typical Configuration Options”, I will be using an example to demonstrate the sort of information typically required to perform user authentication against the UCS LDAP. I will be taking you through the necessary configuration steps using the project management system Redmine as an example, as this requests all the typical information.

In the second section, “Types of Search Users”, I will go into more detail on the possibilities available to you if it is not possible to search through the UCS LDAP anonymously.

If you are not all that familiar with the topic of LDAP yet, I would recommend you read our blog article: Brief Introduction: What’s Behind the Terms LDAP and OpenLDAP? first of all.

“Kopano to go, please!”

…or: How do I set up my own mail and communication server in just 30 minutes? That’s the question I asked myself when my daughter got her first smartphone and asked for an e-mail address. I needed something which was easy to use (I’m no Linux whiz) and compatible with both the web and smartphones, which also allowed me as a parent to retain some degree of control.

I published the following article on my own blog on August 13, 2016. And because what’s good for families with daughters of course can’t be bad for companies either, my colleagues at Univention thought it would be worth publishing here too.

UCC 3.0 released: Switch from Kubuntu to Ubuntu

UCC Univention Corporate Client Logo

This week we have published version 3.0 of Univention Corporate Client (UCC) our desktop solution for the operation and administration of PCs, notebooks and thin clients. An essential change in comparison to previous releases is the change of the technical basis from Kubuntu to Ubuntu. Our reason for this switch was that Ubuntu offers longer support terms (5 years) for the Long Term Support (LTS) Versions. Kubuntu 16.04 LTS only offers support for 3 years. Customers thus profit from a longterm support for UCC. With this switch the desktop environment was also changed from KDE to Unity. Unity was especially developed for Ubuntu by Canonical. To achieve a better overview of all UCC images installed in one environment, all actually installed client images will be reported to Univention Corporate Server (UCS) from now on. As UCS is the central identity management system for UCC, these images will then be displayed for easy search in UCS.

Shortly Explained: Virtualization

Virtualization Schriftzug

In its simplest terms, virtualization is the replication of hardware resources via software implementations. It is employed in particular to provide multiple server systems on a single hardware system. Although I want to concentrate on the virtualization of server systems in this article, it is important to mention that these principles are also being applied ever more frequently in the fields of network technology and data storage as well as on clients too.

Cool Solutions – Guacamole…Not Just a Dip!

What are “Cool Solutions”?

Cool Solutions is the name we use to describe Univention solutions which expand UCS with practical, advantageous functions and are also sometimes employed by our customers. These solutions are regularly presented in the Univention Wiki in the form of Cool Solutions articles.

In a new series of articles, we want to introduce you to the five most popular “Cool Solutions” over the next few weeks. Today we are starting with Guacamole – and no, we don’t mean the tasty Mexican dip this time.

Protection Against Ransomware – a Subjective Overview

antivirus. Binary code, technology background

The threat posed by ransomware such as Locky and other malware has been a hot topic on and off in the media for months now. In a number of cases, including some rather more prominent ones, hackers have managed and continue to manage to infect their victims’ files with malware, which encrypts them to the point where they can no longer be used – the files are only made available again once a “ransom” has been paid. The more accesses the user in question has, the higher the damage: if possible, files on servers in the network are also “captured”.

A great deal has already been written on the topic. At this point, I would like – albeit very subjectively – to introduce a couple of approaches for how to protect yourself against such attacks.