Ubuntu in the University: dangerous installed applications?

[Francisco Borges]

: On Thu, Oct 26, 2006 at 01:00AM -0400, Daniel Allen wrote:

> Hi,
>
> We've deployed a set of Ubuntu servers to act as X11 servers in a university
> setting for Computer Science students.

Glad to hear that!

> It's come up that... some of the packages that are installed by default
> probably shouldn't be, both by policy and to reduce undergrads'
> opportunities for mischief.  Right now we're looking at netcat and
> bittorrent.  Suggestions for other mischief tools? (Yes, I know this could
> be a loaded question based on definitions- we're not removing ssh or
> firefox, obviously. I'd prefer keeping this discussion to specific packages
> that are high or reasonably high risk for abuse by crafty students; from
> these, we can select the minimal number to remove to reduce the greatest
> amount of headache for us admins.  Thanks.)

I once worked as a sysadmin of a universitary student network.

I see your point, but as someone already pointed out, for as long as
they can install/compile software themselves, the problem remains. Thus
IMHO removing any package that already require mild skills to be used is
counterproductive, since some students could be using them to learn.

Right now out of the top of my head, I can only think about P2P software
as stuff I would remove.

[...]

(Sorry if you already know this) BTW, I would like to *humbly* suggest
you to use slocate. Student's (particularly) love to spent time trying
to find out things about their colleagues.

Cheers,
-- 
Francisco