This page is designed to support Linux users at Ball State University, specifically with respect to using University resources already available to users of other operating systems. This page is not a guide on how to install or use Linux in general; I assume that you, the reader, already have some experience in using Linux.
It is possible to connect to the BSU VPN through Linux by using an official Cisco client. However, this client cannot be directly downloaded due to export restrictions. I have permission from UCS to distribute the client to BSU students, faculy, and staff. If you would like a copy, please email me from your BSU account, and I will be happy to send it to you.
For the record, I had no luck using the free and open VPN clients that are available for linux, even with the Cisco/BSU configuration files. I'd be glad to hear of anyone else's success stories.
Further instructions to be posted depending on access requests.
You may already know that you can use a web client to access your BSU Microsoft Exchange account. You can connect securely via https://webmail.bsu.edu/exchange. However, the web client is not very user-friendly, and so it would be nice to have another option.
Evolution is a free email, calendaring, and collaboration tool released by Novell. The Exchange connector had been a closed, commercial product in the past, but it has been graciously released to the community. You can download Evolution in various forms through gnome.org, although you may have better luck getting a port specific to your distribution. On Mandriva (my preferred distribution), this is as simple as setting up urpmi and then running urpmi evolution ximian-connector. From there, simply select "Microsoft Exchange" as your server type and proivde https://webmail.bsu.edu/exchange as the OWA URL.
You can also use Ball State's LDAP server from within Evolution, which will ease the look-up of email addresses. Edit your BSU exchange account from within the Preferences dialog (in the Edit menu), and under receiving options, set the "Global Catalog server name" to "dc03.bsu.edu". After restarting, you should be able to open the Contacts page and search the Ball State directory. Note that this only works from within the firewall, either on campus or connected through VPN. (Thanks to Ben Dean for this tip.)
Note that this does not allow access to all of the features available in Outlook. Basically, it is a more user-friendly wrapper around the same functionality of the Exchange web client. Some features, such as checking others' calendars for availability, are not available.
To access iLocker from Linux, I recommend that you use the secure WebDAV clients that are integrated into KDE's Konqueror and Gnome's Nautilus file managers. Using either client, simply connect to a webdavs URL such as webdavs://ilocker.bsu.edu/users/<username>, replacing <username> with your username. Authenticate yourself, and you're connected.
It is also possible to mount WebDAV to your filesystem; however, I have had some trouble creating an elegant solution on Mandriva 2006. You need to use the davfs (or davfs2) kernel module as well as the coda kernel module. I will update this page if I find a convenient mounting solution; please email me if you have one already.
I just had a heck of time trying to get my newly-upgraded Mandriva 2007.1
(Spring) machine to be recognized by name on the network.
Things may have been complicated by the fact that I used the automagic
update feature to upgrade from 2007.0 to 2007.1, so ymmv.
In order to get my machine recognized as caffeine.dhcp.bsu.edu,
here is what I had to do:
Although Linux is not yet fully supported by Ball State University,
the UCS staff have been (mostly) helpful in my requests for
increased security and Linux support, and for this they deserve kudos.
If you are a Linux user at BSU and you have questions about getting the
most of your computing environment, feel free to email me, and I'll
try to reply and post suggestions.
My email address is posted on my
web page.