Linux Getting Started Guide

WHAT IS NETSUPPORT ASSIST?...3 Features... 3 INSTALLATION...5 System Pre-Requisites... 5 Pre-Installation... 5 STARTING THE INSTALLATION...5 Existing Installation Detected... 6 NetSupport Assist Installer program... 6 Select Setup Type... 6 Ready to Install the Program... 7 Room Name... 7 Installation Complete... 7 CONTACTING NETSUPPORT...8 2

WHAT IS NETSUPPORT ASSIST? For use within your Mac or Linux classroom, NetSupport Assist is a focused classroom management software solution that ensures teachers have the tools they need to monitor, engage and collaborate with their students. With NetSupport Assist, teachers can improve the efficiency of classroom teaching by centrally instructing students from their computer. From registering attendance at the start, monitoring activity during and logging off machines at the end of the lesson, NetSupport Assist allows teachers to focus their time and attention on their students, rather than on managing the classroom. Features NetSupport Assist contains a wealth of features to assist you to Train, Support and Monitor Students. Definitions The Tutor is the workstation that shows to or views/takes over the Student. The Student is the workstation that is being shown to, viewed or taken over. Connectivity and Performance Delivering secure connectivity with student machines across both wired and wireless networks, NetSupport Assist can be easily configured to locate 'students' wherever they may be and without compromising network performance: Flexible range of options for connecting to the required student machines: assign machines to a designated room; or, dependent on the naming convention used for your machines; a fixed list of machines or match by partial machine name. Locate machines across any number of TCP/IP subnets. Accelerate Browse option available when searching for a large number of machines. Low Bandwidth Mode available for network environments where low data usage is a priority. Ideal for optimizing wireless network performance. Classroom Management NetSupport Assist provides the tools a teacher needs to centrally manage machines within their classroom - at the start, during and after a lesson: Use thumbnail layouts so the teacher machine represents the layout of the physical classroom. Blank student screens to gain attention. Automatically reboot and reconnect to student computers. Perform a remote log off on all machines. Show Display the Tutor's screen on all, some or one of the Student's screens. Display in a window to enable the Student to carry on working. This makes it the ideal training tool in a networked classroom or training room. Chat Open a discussion session that all or selected Students can join, enter their comments and share with the rest of the class. Message Use the Message option to send important lesson information or alerts to all or selected student machines. Decide how long the message should be displayed. 3

Remote Control (Viewing) Watch or Share a Student's screen. Scale View Windows to fit and View multiple Student screens simultaneously. This is ideal for conducting one to one Training without affecting the other Students and without the Tutor needing to leave their desk. Monitor Mode Monitor the entire class in a single view. Real-time and scaleable thumbnails of each student desktop give you an instant view of what each student is currently doing. Auto Zoom feature allows you to mouse over a specific Student Thumbnail for a better view. Student Thumbnails can be sized using a flexible slide-bar enabling you to make better use of the space available on the Tutor screen. Lock Students Keyboard and mouse The Tutor can quickly lock all Students keyboards and mice to ensure that the Student workstations are not used whilst a demonstration/lecture is being given. Student Register To keep in touch with each class you can prompt the Students to register their details. You can then display their name instead of a less meaningful computer name. Student registration details can be viewed in a Registration report that can be saved for each class. File Transfer Transfer and manipulate files between a Tutor and Student workstations, using advanced Drag and Drop technology. Send/Collect work Prepare files for Students to work on in advance and automatically distribute them as the lesson begins. Even better, once they have worked on the files you can automatically retrieve them for later review and marking. Power Management Power On or Off all classroom machines from the Tutor. Student Survey Facility Obtain instant feedback by displaying a question on the Students screens. Receive real-time analysis of the Students responses and publish survey results to all Students. Screen Capture Keep a visual record of Student activity by taking a snapshot of a Students screen. Application Monitoring Centrally monitor the applications in use on each and every student machine in real-time to ensure the class is always focused on the task in hand. Internet Metering and Control NetSupport Assist allows teachers to instantly see which sites students are visiting, and, if needed take remedial action to block access. Note: Internet Monitoring is only supported on the Mac platform. Support Tool A Support Tool is supplied that in the event of a system issue interrogates the problem machine and saves relevant system data in a file that can be supplied to the IT technician. Wired and Wireless Support NetSupport Assist is designed to work flawlessly over both wired and wireless networks and, at all times, not impact on network capability. 4

INSTALLATION System Pre-Requisites Processor: Pentium 4 or later Memory: 512mb or greater Distribution: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, Centos 6, Fedora 12, 13 & 14, OpenSUSE 11.2, 11.3 & 11.4, Ubuntu/ Edubuntu 9.04 or later, Mint 9, 10 & 11 and Debian 5 & 6. Desktop Manager Gnome, KDE or Unity. Recommended: Dedicated Graphics with Drivers installed. To run the Configurator from the menu the user must be within the sudoers file. Pre-Installation Student Configuration If you already have a Student configured with NetSupport Assist you can copy the Client32.ini file located in /opt/netsupport/netsupportassist/bin and place this next to the installer. This will install a Student with the same configuration settings as applied on the already configured Student. License If you have a copy of the NSA.LIC file you can place this next to the installer, this will install a licensed copy of NetSupport Assist without the need to input the license details within the installer. STARTING THE INSTALLATION NetSupport Assist is provided within a tar.gz format. Extract the installer from the tar.gz using either the user interface file extractor of from the terminal using tar zxf NetSupportAssist.tar.gz. Once the NetSupportAssist-1.10.run is extracted you can run the installer using./netsupportassist- 1.10 from the terminal. Note: That you will either have run the installer as a super user or as sudo if the current user has sudo access. (I.e. sudo./netsupportassist-1.10.run) Choose the appropriate language from the drop down menu and select OK to install NetSupport Assist. 5

Existing Installation Detected This screen will appear if a copy of NetSupport Assist is already installed on the workstation. The installer will prompt you, if you wish to continue click OK to automatically uninstall any NetSupport Assist files already on the system and continue the installation. Note: Configuration and Licence files will not be removed. NetSupport Assist Installer program The Installer Welcome screen will appear. Click Next to continue. NetSupport Assist License Agreement The NetSupport Assist License Agreement will be displayed. Please read the License Agreement carefully and select I accept the terms in the license agreement and click Next to continue. If you reject the License Agreement, (I do not accept the terms in the license agreement) click Cancel. NetSupport Assist will not be installed and you will be asked if you wish to abort the install program. License Information Select the Licensing method preferred, if you already have a license for NetSupport Assist, select Register, while if you are evaluating NetSupport Assist select 30 day evaluation option and click Next. Select Setup Type Choose the setup type to install on the workstation. 6

Typical This option installs the Tutor, Student, Student Configurator and Help files, this option is often referred to as a Full Install. Tutor Installs the Tutor software. This feature, sometimes called the Control, should be installed on workstations which will be used to remote control other workstations. Student Installs the Student software and Student Configurator. This feature, sometimes called the Client, should be installed on workstations that will be remote controlled. Click Next when ready to continue. Ready to Install the Program To start the installation, click Install. To change any of the previous selections, click Back. To quit the installation, click Cancel. Room Name Enter the room name you wish locate the student machines in, by default the room value entered will be Eval. The room value can be updated later in the Tutor or Student Configuration settings. Note: This will only appear on new installs upgraded systems will retain the existing room name. Installation Complete To complete the installation click Finish to exit the Setup program. Note: If you have installed the NetSupport Assist Student component, you will be requested to reboot the system, if you reject the restart, the Student component will not start until the machine is restarted. 7

CONTACTING NETSUPPORT UK & International www.netsupportsoftware.com Technical Support: support@netsupportsoftware.com Sales (UK & Eire): sales@netsupportsoftware.co.uk Sales (International): sales@netsupportsoftware.com North America www.netsupport-inc.com Technical Support: support@netsupport-inc.com Sales: sales@netsupport-inc.com Germany, Austria and Switzerland www.pci-software.de Technical Support: support@pci-software.de Sales: sales@pci-software.de Japan www.netsupportjapan.com Technical Support: support@netsupportsoftware.com Sales: sales@netsupportjapan.com 8