On Thu, 2007-08-16 at 07:49 +1000, David Timms wrote:
> Kam Leo wrote:
> > On 8/14/07, Antonio Olivares <olivares14031@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> ...
> >>> ----- Original Message ----
> > If your friend needs to only restore a machine after each semester or
> > quarter use Norton Ghost or equivalent.
> Let's make that week or day or class !
>
> In fact I have heard of a system that auto reloads an image each
> midnight or so - I don't remember what that was.
>
> Hopefully the friend is using the obvious things like: bios password,
> only boot HD, locking network access to specific mac address, etc,
> disabling auto-run of cd/usb, etc.
>
> About the vmware notion: In the ms way, a powerful machine could be
> installed as a terminal server. Remove the hard disks from the student
> machines. Network boot the PC's to an linux LTSP server. Only one
> application would be available / installed: tsclient {Terminal Server
> Client}.
>
> Install a master power switch that feeds all the student PC's. At the
> end of each class, ask the students to save their work {to their linux
> network drive}. Then cycle the power. Machines BIOS set to auto restart
> on mains application - in 3 minutes every machine has a spanking fresh
> image loaded. That can only connect to the terminal server {which is
> properly locked down}.
>
> It might also be possible to config your storage file system to allowing
> save of only the document types that you actually need -
>
At the site where I worked, we reloaded the student accounts with a
script. Of course, that was not resetting the OS, but if the OS were in
VM ware, the script could copy the entire directory, then reboot the
machine. Wouldn't that work?
Regards,
Les H
