Re: [seul-edu] youngsters logging in

[Harry McGregor <micros@azstarnet.com>]

On Fri, 11 May 2001, Jim Thomas wrote:

> Harry McGregor wrote:
> >
> > Ok, sorry I am getting into this thread late...
>
> No need to apologize.  All input is welcome.
>
> > Now here is the big thing:  No passwords.  We set our PAM config to permit
> > null passwords for local GDM login, but not for SSH, (or if it was their,
> > telnet), or even text console login.
>
> This just won't work in my situation since mine is a K12 school.

OK, so you do have issues with the olderstudents finding the younger
student's names, etc.

> I have
> decided to go with KDE2 so that usernames can be entered via a mouse
> click, and use weak passwords for the younger crowd.

KDM and KDM both support the face browser.

> Their accounts
> will be locked by default.  I will put together an app that the teacher
> can run to unlock the accounts for one class.  They will automatically
> relock after five minutes.

I presume you will have an account for each student, etc, not just a
system wide account.  This setup might work, if the teachers are
cooperative.  For the younger students, I would probably go with null
passwords since you are locking the accounts login abilities.  If a
password is set, you could make it so that the login abilities are
available without the program controling them, etc.

> At first I was thinking it'd be a bash script run as root, but now I'm
> leaning towards an suid C program so the teacher doesn't have to log in
> as root.

Nick, any suggestions here?

			Harry

> --
> Jim Thomas                            E-mail:     jthomas@bittware.com
> Senior Applications Engineer          Web:     http://www.bittware.com
> Bittware, Inc                         Tel:              (703) 779-7770
> Reality continues to ruin my life. - Calvin
>

--
Harry McGregor, CEO, Co-Founder
Hmcgregor@osef.org, (520) 661-7875 (CELL)
Open Source Education Foundation, http://www.osef.org