locking down the desktop

[Gavin McCullagh]

Hi,

On Mon, 21 Jan 2008, btabor wrote:

> I'm wandering if a deep-freeze type script would be the best way to go.
> Any thoughts?

Out of pure curiosity, I looked up what Deep Freeze does.

	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Freeze_(software)

I'd say writing a similar script for an Edubuntu desktop (as opposed to an
Edubuntu thin client) would be a five minute job.  For an ordinary user,
the only locations that are writable are:

 - the user's home directory
 - /tmp (which isn't worth worrying about)

So, if you get the home directory as you want it, back it up using 

	tar -cvzf /home/username_template.tar.gz /home/username

then write a 3-line script which runs on boot:

	#!/bin/sh
	cd /home
	rm -r /home/username_lastboot
	mv username username_lastboot
	tar -xzf username_template.tar.gz

This is untested and might need some tweaks but it should recreate the home
directory.  You can put it into /etc/init.d/ and link it into /etc/rcS.d/
so it runs on every boot.

Gavin