Hi,

Unfortunately this neat proposal doesn't address the Journal (nor my problem of delivering the correct educational content per the grade level of the user).

On balance, the risk of work being done by one user in the name of another is probably not worth the 'screensaver' strategy. In the end, the users will have to learn the habit of identifying themselves.

Tony


On 12/03/2012 07:52 AM, iaep-requ...@lists.sugarlabs.org wrote:
Message: 5 Date: Mon, 3 Dec 2012 16:36:28 +1100 From: James Cameron
<qu...@laptop.org> To: "Community Support Volunteers -- who help respond
to \"help AT laptop.org\"" <support-g...@lists.laptop.org> Cc: Janissa
Balcomb <jani...@silverstar.com>, iaep <iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org>
Subject: Re: [IAEP] [support-gang] <OLPC Message-ID:
<20121203053628.ga3...@us.netrek.org> Content-Type: text/plain;
charset=us-ascii On Mon, Dec 03, 2012 at 03:53:32PM +1100, James Cameron
wrote:
>For a truly shared computer, I suggest switching to a login screen
>before Sugar, such as that provided by the default Fedora (before OLPC
>OS removed it).
I tried this just now on an XO-4 with 13.1.0 build 15, and was able to
switch to using a login screen:

# yum install -y gdm       # install the login screen
# chkconfig olpc-dm off    # turn off the automatic login by OLPC
# chkconfig gdm on         # turn on the login screen
# passwd olpc              # set the password on the default account
# adduser fred             # create a new account
# passwd fred              # set the password on the new account
# reboot

It worked reasonably well, and the login screen had a Sugar vs GNOME
option, but there were a few irritating bugs that would need to be
worked:

- fonts used by Sugar are too small, (perhaps this is something done
   by olpc-dm when it should instead be done in a platform-specific
   session startup for Sugar),

- there's no Logout option on Sugar, to take the system back to the
   login screen,

- after Logout from GNOME, there is system startup text displayed for
   a short time before the login screen appears,

- no Sugar Activities are present in the second account even if they
   are copied manually ... something that the Sugar developers could
   probably advise on.

>For XO-1.5, a 4GB SD card per student might be another alternative;
>when the card is inserted before power on, the laptop could be made to
>behave with the identity of that student.  This is costly, and risky,
>but is available immediately with no unusual configuration.
How is this done?  Store a fresh operating system on the SD card using
a spare laptop, then use the SD card on the student shared laptop:

- unlock a spare laptop,

- power off the spare laptop,

- insert an SD card,

- power on and get to the ok prompt,

- type 'devalias fsdisk ext:' and press enter, this selects the
   external SD card socket for the next step,

- type 'fs-update u:\21021o1.zd' to install the build, changing the
   file name as appropriate,

- remove the card,

- power off the student shared laptop,

- insert the card,

- power on the laptop.

The fs-update step would need to be repeated for each SD card, unless
a duplicator was available.  If using a duplicator, the master SD card
must be duplicated before it is used to boot a laptop.

-- James Cameron http://quozl.linux.org.au/

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