[Server-devel] multiple users of an xo

[Martin Langhoff]

On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 6:47 PM, Tony Anderson <tony at olenepal.org> wrote:
> I expect to be working with a school which runs two sessions. As a result
> each XO is shared by two students, one from each session.
>
> 1 - (probably a Sugar issue) - each of the two students should have their
> own independent Journal (and backup-restore).

We've discussed this before I think. This is a Sugar + OS thing. You
need to sort it out at that level. One thing that might work is
mounting a different /home/olpc directory . If you just swap the
directory over, or auto-mount a homedir from USB disk or SD card,
it'll work.

> 2 - each student should have an independent registration on the schoolserver
> (esp. including Moodle).

Areas affected

1 - Registration affects several services, a growing number of them,
and it depends on the sn/uuid _and the ssh private key_ generated in
the user's homedir by Sugar. It will be a complicated thing to split
the registration thing up, specially around backup, ejabberd, and OATS
protocol.

2 - Moodle trusts a cookie that Browse.xo creates. You can tweak that
by editing Browse.xo code and the corresponding moodle code. 100%
unsupported, you're on your own, but it's relatively easy in
comparison with #1

> 3 - the school supports grades 1-8 so that students need to be registered in
> Moodle by grade (not in all courses).

You can do that with moodle in many ways. Easiest to implement are by
hand, or uploading csv files that match user->course. (userid is the
sn).

> 4 - teachers can be registered in that role by normal Moodle procedures.

Same as previous.

> The current registration scheme is based on the xo's serial number. Does
> anyone have a suggestion as to how this should be managed? There has been
> talk re SoaS on how to register user's on the schoolserver independent of a
> serial-number. Has this reached a concensus?

I think so -- sn and uuid are "made of random" and saved in the
homedir. You can copy the approach but bear in mind you'll hve to
touch various parts of the infra.

> On a slightly different topic. I have a schoolserver installed with XS 6 but
> OLE Nepal's version of XO (0.82 variant). OLE Nepal has made registration
> automatic (the menu now shows only shutdown and control panel as options).
> Does anyone know where that code is in Sugar so I can  execute it from the
> command line?

There is no way to do it from the cli afaik. I also find it awkward.


m
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 martin at laptop.org -- School Server Architect
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