I teach new media classes at a small liberal arts and sciences university. For the past several years, I have been running an Ubuntu server on an old desktop PC in my office. At the beginning of each semester, I create an account on the web server for each student. They learn how to use FTP to upload their digital projects, and some students experiment with basic UNIX command line options. The server recently died, and I'd love to swap in my old Macbook as the new server.
I have spent the better part of a day trying to install Ubuntu 14.04 on a late-2011 MBP. Unfortunately, the dual graphics card configuration causes real problems for the Ubuntu installer. I've worked through multiple installation guides, and cannot manage to boot to the Ubuntu OS without manually editing the grub every single time.
Is it possible to accomplish my objectives while sticking with Yosemite on the MBP? Specifically, this is what I need to be able to do:
SSH into the MBP server from my other computer in order to create new user accounts.
Allow students to connect to their FTP folders via SFTP. Over the course of a typical year, there would be probably be around 30 new user accounts created.
Really... That's about all I need to do. I don't need a fancy graphical interface. I just want to telnet/FTP into the server and occasionally patch it to receive the latest security updates.
I know that Macs have some sort of UNIX terminal under the shell. It would be so cool if I could just telnet/SSH to reach the machine from my desktop computer. Then, I could use basic UNIX commands to create user accounts.