[Server-devel] the "first user is admin" moodle policy

[Martin Langhoff]

On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 3:02 PM, Daniel Drake<dsd at laptop.org> wrote:
> The teachers already had their XOs at this point

The teachers have XOs and the kids don't yet. Correct?

> I think this is basically a conflict between the case when you are
> installing 1 XS (in which case what you are describing is perfect) vs
> 10+ of them.

I am still wrapping my head around the workflows applied in each
school to deploy 10+ schools...

> Having to connect up other computers and open web browsers

But... but... OK, these are my assumptions:

1 - You do send a technician (or more) with the XS + AP plus some cabling

2 - The technician will have to open a browser, assoc to the AP, open
Browse.xo and visit the XS homepage as a basic QA step. A technician
cannot leave a school without having tested the connection to the XS
at least _once_.

 3 - As part of #2, the technician registers the XO that will be the
head teacher's machine. If the head teacher already has an XO, the
technician borrows it. Otherwise, the technician grabs a random XO,
registers it, and hands it over with a bit of ceremony to the head.
This is a social thing: the technician should do something to stress
that the XO is special.

> And command-based interfaces can be
> more easily automated by the deployments.

Except that you don't know what to automate. As you said, you don't
know what XO will the head teacher get. What's the SN? UUID?

Here's a possible approach: Right now we can't tag anyone in any role
until they've registered. In fact, early in the installation we don't
really have a complete Moodle DB. So a command in the style you
requested doesn't have much to work on.

On the other hand, if you do know the SN, it would be relatively easy
to make a list of 'blessed' SNs, so

 echo SN1234567B >> /etc/moodle/coursecreators

would be a way to handle it. And the presence of that file signals
that the 'first come is coursecreator' feature is immediately
disabled.

> In my experience, even with instructions this would not happen according
> to plan. It really needs to be in the control of the team doing the
> infrastructure.

Or the technician handling the setup @ the school?

Is that still an unreasonable expectation?

cheers,



m
-- 
 martin.langhoff at gmail.com
 martin at laptop.org -- School Server Architect
 - ask interesting questions
 - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
 - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff