[comp.sys.mac.apps] hard drive write-protection?

mcmac@hubcap.clemson.edu (Scott McAlister) (02/14/91)

Sorry, I know there was some recent discussion on this, but I didn't pay
attention to it earlier.

Let me describe the situation:
I supervise a Mac Lab here at Clemson and we have a problem of students
putting unauthorized software on the hard drives, and they sometimes make
it difficult to find the software (hiding within folders). It hasn't been 
much of problem having the lab operators go thru each folder to find the
software, but now it is.

What I want to do is to partition the hard drives, with one partition
containing all of our legitimate software, write-protected.  And the other
partition open for the students to save to.  This way, just one large dump
to the trash can deletes all of the unauthorized stuff.   

I have just looked at DiskLock, by Brian Bechtel, but it locks the startup 
disk.  I want to avoid this since most of the programs today are writing
pref files and such to the system folder, which I believe will create some
problems if the disk is read-only.

Any ideas will be appreciated and I'm not limited to public domain software,
so commercial will be fine.

Scott McAlister      mcmac@hubcap.clemson.edu
Clemson University

goldis@umaxc.weeg.uiowa.edu (Al Goldis) (02/15/91)

From article <13100@hubcap.clemson.edu>, by mcmac@hubcap.clemson.edu (Scott McAlister):
[...]
> Let me describe the situation:
> I supervise a Mac Lab here at Clemson and we have a problem of students
> putting unauthorized software on the hard drives, and they sometimes make
> it difficult to find the software (hiding within folders). It hasn't been 
> much of problem having the lab operators go thru each folder to find the
> software, but now it is.
 
> What I want to do is to partition the hard drives, with one partition
> containing all of our legitimate software, write-protected.  And the other
> partition open for the students to save to.  This way, just one large dump
> to the trash can deletes all of the unauthorized stuff.   

We have an almost identical situation here.  We've been very happy
with Hard Disk Partition(tm) from FWB Software.  In addition to what
you've described above, it can also copy-protect the software on a
partition.

I'd be happy to provide more specific details on request.
--
Al Goldis         goldis@umaxc.weeg.uiowa.edu
Weeg Computing Center, The University of Iowa

webber@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Andrew Webber) (02/16/91)

>> Let me describe the situation:
>> I supervise a Mac Lab here at Clemson and we have a problem of students
>> putting unauthorized software on the hard drives, and they sometimes make
>> it difficult to find the software (hiding within folders). It hasn't been 
>> much of problem having the lab operators go thru each folder to find the
>> software, but now it is.
> 
How about removing the folders... :-)

I run a lab too.  We've been using MacTools for undeleting and copy-
protecting files.  I've been wondering (haven't tried it yet) if it
would be possible to have only the application visible in the main
directory and thus the supplemental ones hidden in the system folder
(invisible) or just make them invisible in the main directory.  This
would probably not be appropriate for some applications. (??)  But
there wouldn't be those crevices to hide files in anymore.

Has anyone out there had success with this sort of thing?


-- 
  Andrew Webber
  Internet:  a-webber@uiuc.edu
  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign