karrer@aludra.usc.edu (Anthony Karrer) (01/26/91)
We are using MINIX 1.5 in our undergrad O/S class at Loyola Marymount University. We have 9 students, a bunch of IBM PC's and PS/2's, 2 with hard drives (MINIX installed). Now comes the question, What have people found to be the best organization of resources such that ... (a) They don't continually screw up the hard disks ... Is there a way that we can get around them having access to their own root disk (and /etc/passwd)? How can they change their passwords without having access to the root password in order to copy the /etc/passwd file back to the root disk on the hard drive (we are using a RAM disk)? (b) Have a nice directory structure for their files. It would be preferable to have the students save their files on their own disks. On the other hand, it would be nice for them to receive maximum benefit from the speed of the machines. Essentially, we want them to compile on the PS/2's with hard drive and edit/test on the other machines. We are very new to using MINIX, so any help towards organizing this kind of lab setting would be appreciated. -- Take It Easy, Anthony Karrer (akarrer@pollux.usc.edu)
regn@geyer.UUCP (Robert Regn) (03/26/91)
In article <14386@chaph.usc.edu> karrer@aludra.usc.edu (Anthony Karrer) writes: >We are using MINIX 1.5 in our undergrad O/S class at Loyola > >(a) They don't continually screw up the hard disks ... Is there a >way that we can get around them having access to their own root >disk (and /etc/passwd)? How can they change their passwords without >having access to the root password in order to copy the /etc/passwd >file back to the root disk on the hard drive (we are using a RAM disk)? We have had the same problem. Our solution: Use a crontab line as: 0,10,20,30,40,50 * * * * mount /dev/hdx /mnt; cp /etc/passwd /mnt/etc/passwd ; umount /dev/hdx where hdx has the root image. This copies changed passwd files back to disk. -- Robert Regn University of Wuerzburg, Germany regn@informatik.uni-wuerzburg.dbp.de