[OLPC-devel] Secure BIOS on the OLPC

Thu Aug 31 06:58:22 EDT 2006

Tushar Adeshara wrote:
> On 8/30/06, Joshua N Pritikin <jpritikin at pobox.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, Aug 29, 2006 at 12:02:18PM -0400, Jim Gettys wrote:
>> > "Belt and Suspenders" feels right to me.
>>
>> Even if kids are going to blindly follow directions about "Hold this
>> key combo
>> down to reflash the BIOS", that's good because then they'll know that
>> _something_ is happening. Mystery invites investigation. More kids will
>> discover the BIOS and its humble purpose.
> 
> I think we need to also think about situations where there will be
> many such laptops (100 to 500) that need BIOS update. Best way to do
> that here would be no physical interaction with machine for BIOS
> update.

At some school: "Hey kids, please press spacebar now!"

Laptops are inteded to stay with the kids all the time. BIOS updates
should hopefully be something needed at most once or twice, unlike
regurlar kernel updates. So telling kids once in their lifetime to
press a specific button while they are at school is no significant
problem.

Regards,
Carl-Daniel
-- 
http://www.hailfinger.org/