[Sugar-devel] erasing the journal and config

[Sameer Verma]

On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 8:17 AM, Daniel Drake<dsd at laptop.org> wrote:
> 2009/8/27 Sameer Verma <sverma at sfsu.edu>:
>> I posed this question on OLPC Support Gang earlier and got responses
>> that its not possible to do so under bitfrost and rainbow.
>>
>> ===================
>> "Hello everybody,
>>
>> We have a lending library at SFSU, ready to go, but we need to have a
>> way to erase the config and journal every time the XO comes back from
>> a borrower. The SFSU library staff have made it very clear that they
>> don't want the process to be "open the terminal and run a script". An
>> activity (say, Erase) would be quite desirable.
>
> In my opinion, this is silly. Teach them how to run a script, teach
> them how to reflash or tell them to stop being difficult.
>
> As for the borrowers end - this is sillier. What are you expecting the
> borrowers to actually do with their XOs? It's for generating
> contributions to the community, right?
>
> Daniel
>

I'm dealing with our library. We could have gone the route of a
student group handling this, but logistically, it made more sense for
the library to do this. They are very strict about privacy of patrons
(and rightly so). Privacy is privacy. It does not matter what
borrowers do with their XOs. The library will not even tell me *who*
borrows the laptops. We are going to provide a laminated card with a
URL to provide structured feedback. So, we can't look up people who
borrow the XOs, but we can hope to get feedback and contribution
voluntarily from the borrowers.

I'm going to stick with the "run a script" routine for now.

cheers,
Sameer
-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Information Systems
Director, Center for Business Solutions
San Francisco State University
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://cbs.sfsu.edu/
http://is.sfsu.edu/