how to configure the network in a lab with 8 computers and ubuntustudio

[Mark Stuart Burge]

Some ideas from my unconventional mind ..

(not even sure if these would work)

I would probably end up cloning hard drives to begin with, then ..

Create the same username such as 'student' with the same password

Map the home for that username to an external drive (not sure if latency 
would be an issue - if so then script a dump of the external drive to 
the internal hard drive to temporarily use for home, then on log off, 
script a dump back to the external drive and clear the home ready for 
the next user.)

This way each student gets to keep their work with them and you are not 
using large storage in house.

Fry's amongst others do a cheap external usb enclosure ($9 last time I 
bought one) that is usb bus powered and you can get some low cost 2.5in 
hard drives to put in them (or even used drives)


The student username would not be able to muck around with the 
configuration and if something did go wrong, well, you simply clone out 
the master again or push the necessary files to the workstation.

or

I don't know how to do this, but how about mounting an image on the 
network during the boot process to pull the root directory, then running 
the script mentioned above to pull home from usbdisk.


padovani wrote:
> Hi,
> we are planning to create a ubuntu-studio based lab with 8 computers... 
> I am already a Ubuntu studio user, but had never configured a network 
> like that in ubuntu... Does anyone have a tutorial or something like that?
> We would need to set these machines so that the students could run some 
> programs but not change the config files and such things...
> Any tips are welcome.
> tx,
> J. H. Padovani
>
> PS: It would also be nice to configure all machines without effort 
> (install programs and so on). A local repo would be a good but I am 
> thinking if it would be possible to "clone" all the system changes in 
> one machine to the other 7...
>
>