Setup for student use

[NoaHall]

Haha, you're mean. Even if no offence meant He just didn't have the foresight to do so. I expect they have set up a secure network for Windows, doing the same for Linux is easy.

And I'm not saying what you were, because you were wrong. I'm just agreeing that it's unlikely.

[nikhilbhardwaj]

Haha, you're mean. Even if no offence meant

ya i know
probably shouldn't have said that

again i'll say that it can be done
lets say i need a something to reset the BIOS password with the command line
i could just email it to myself and get it from there

and lets just call it at
that if the person has implemented most of what has been said here
he'll have a system that will be unlikely to be hacked by most people

[mcduck]

I am shocked. Completely shocked. I was told and I also keep reading about it: Linux is so much safer than Windows. There is no way to do "illegal" stuff on a Linux computer as ordinary user.
Now I read there are many ways to get in and do those things anyway. Did people lie to me? Did I read fairy tales about Linux? What is going on here?
This is something I never expected and to be honest I hate it. This is something I never saw coming, until this thread came along.
Well, I just read the different posts again and try to make my Linux as closed as possible, knowing now I can never close it completely.
Bummer.

No, normal users have very limited powers when running Linux.

Pretty much everything discussed here happens outside of the operating system. At that stage it makes no difference what OS you are talking about, since it's not running. For example accessing BIOS or using features of Grub are not parts of Linux itself, so Linux can't protect you from those things. It's not even running at the time when you access Grub or BIOS.

Like I said, physical access to a computer pretty much gives you all powers over that machine. Operating systems can't limit that apart from the parts that user's can/can't do from that operating system itself.

So, no fairy tales, Linux is very secure operating systems but there's much more to computer security than what operating systems can handle. And like I said in my previous post in this thread, restricting physical access to computer is the first thing you need to do, everything else comes after that.

(If you can't restrict unwanted physical access to your computer your only option for protecting your files is encrypting them. Everything else can be worked around, no matter what operating systems or other software you use)

[lordyosch]

ya i know
probably shouldn't have said that

again i'll say that it can be done
lets say i need a something to reset the BIOS password with the command line
i could just email it to myself and get it from there

and lets just call it at
that if the person has implemented most of what has been said here
he'll have a system that will be unlikely to be hacked by most people

I'm totally unoffended by your remarks! I setup the computer straight from live CD's. I asked the student specifically to break it. I think my instruction was 'if you can delete the OS, then do it'. I wanted him to find all the ways he can to get in, he's 'part of the system' not against it. His mind works differently to mine!

So first hurdle cleared by student. Now I've added machine guns to grub. Its going to be fun to see where he goes next!



Jay

[NoaHall]

Has he used Linux before? I doubt many people in your school have, so I wouldn't worry about them finding too many loopholes.

[lordyosch]

Has he used Linux before? I doubt many people in your school have, so I wouldn't worry about them finding too many loopholes.

He has. He's probably the biggest geek we have (and maybe reading this, Hi Sam...)

You're probably right about the rest not being able/bothered but if we want to expand the use of Linux in the school (take over the world) then we need to show it's safe. My colleague (Head of IT) and I are about the only linux users on staff, we're trying to break M$ stranglehold on the school and thus save us a whole heap of cash.


Jay

[NoaHall]

Ah, if only my school was like that. It might have at least two computers in every room, but most don't have any more than 512 MB of ram, and around 500 mhz cpu. I don't know why they run windows on them. Linux would be much more suitable.

He's used it before, so he knows his way around with it. I doubt anyone else would be able to do so.

[lordyosch]

The roll out has begun!

I have four working Ubuntu terminals in my classroom now (limited by space) and I've got some students helping me set up another four for another classroom.

I've recently got a bit more fired up about the project because I remembered by school has a Moodle VLE server, but no one uses it!

We had some half-a$$ed training 2 years ago and we promptly forgot all about it. No I've rediscovered it, and printed of the 'Using Moodle'book (free to reproduce) I'm full steam ahead.

I've had students doing experiments in class and instead of recording their results only in their books then sharing on the board, we put them straight into a moodle database and from there I can export to OOO and make graphs on the screen -Its a brave new world!


Jay

[hwttdz]

Couldn't one put the cd/usb on a network machine? That the student's don't have physical access to? That way they could only access the cd/usb after booting (and in fact unless you set it up otherwise they don't have permission to mount/unmount the cd/dvd/usb, though you can set it up to automount). It would also mean that they don't put any cd/dvd/usb in other than ones you want. Though I don't know about multiple clients reading from one cd at a time.

I'm imagining:
head machine - no physical access for students, with cd/dvd/usb drive
other machines - mount drive found on head machine over network