d...@laptop.org said: > When we discussed this while I was in Peru, one requirement they identified > is that the kid would log onto an XO one day and do some work, and then log > onto another XO the following week and continue the same work.
> Assuming this still stands, this strongly calls for a network-based home > directory system with some kind of network login service (but someone with > experience in such areas should comment). This would require a number of > changes at the OS level and server level, but Sugar would be left untouched, > as far as I can think. I think there are two approaches. One is for /home to live on the file server and XOs to access their files via NFS. There may be interesting alternatives to NFS, but I'm not familiar with any of them. The other is to have a working copy of files on the local machine and manually slosh files back and forth, probably using a program to automate things. I don't think either would be great, but both could probably be made to work. Both depend on reasonable network support. Somebody would have to do some experimenting to see how many users the typical WiFi setup can support. I've worked at two places that mounted /home on our personal workstations via NFS. We did occasionally login from other machines but the main reason for using NFS was for sharing and centralizing the backup. Both worked, but there were lots of quirks, and nobody tried to take their machines home at night. Note that in addition to /home, you have to keep /etc/passwd and various other files synchronized. Another consideration when using NSF is security. It has a long history of weak security. At both of the places where I used NFS, we lived with it. (We were all mature adults working for the same company and such. Personnel and payroll were on different systems. ...) In the context of schools, it might get interesting if the teachers are storing their files on the same server. ---------- It's been a long time since I worked with a slosh by hand system. I've forgotten all the details. We were happy with it, but we weren't switching workstations often. I'd expect there are lots of modern software packages designed to keep laptops synchronized. One of them might fit the XO usage pattern. With the right wrapper, one of the source-control packages might work. It might be reasonable to modify the current backup/restore code to do the sloshing. One catch for an XO is that the file system is tiny so you would have to delete the previous user's files to make room for the next user. NB: You really don't want to delete them if they haven't been copied back yet. Another possible problem is that the network load is likely to be synchronized, say at the beginning of the school day when the machines get handed off from one user to the next. ---------- What's the backup mechanism on current school servers? If the truth lives on my XO and the school server is "just" a backup, I might be willing to not backup the school server. On the other hand, if the truth lives on the school server, I'd really want another layer or two of backup. Here is another alternative... Give each child their own SD card. Patch Sugar to look there. Or patch the system to mount /home/olpc there. ... -- These are my opinions, not necessarily my employer's. I hate spam. _______________________________________________ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel