[K12OSN] user desktops

Quentin Hartman qhartman at lane.k12.or.us
Thu Jun 10 20:51:55 UTC 2004


On Thu, 2004-06-10 at 07:41, Lewis Holcroft wrote:
> All users will have access to the web and mail, but only certain users 
> will have access to ripping CD's. What is the best way of setting this 
> up.

A couple of possibilities exist, the best answer depends on other
aspects of your situation. You coould:

1- Disable read access to the CD-ROM devices by changing the permissions
on them. This wouldn't work well, however, if the email/web people would
be allowed to use the CD-ROM for anything else. However, this is pretty
much unbeatable, as far as I know.

2- Disable access to the installed ripping programs by changing the
permissions on the executables. This obviously is a more focused
control, but it would be possible to end-run around it by installing a
ripping program into the home directory and running it from there. If
your users are not that sophisticated or persistent, this may be a
non-issue. For the best, simplest results, make sure you target the
back-end programs (cdparanoia,oggenc, etc) rather than the front-end
ones (Sound Juicer, GRIP, etc..)

3- Do (2) and also disable executables within the home directory to stop
the end-run mentioned above. I don't know the details of this or all
it's (quite far-reaching, potentially) implications, but I imagine it
could be handled through changing the umask setting in /etc/profile. Can
anyone more knowledgeable in this area comment?

There are other ways I can think of that might work, but these three
seem to be the most practical.
-- 
-Regards-

-Quentin Hartman-

Technology Coordinator
South Lane School District
Cottage Grove, Oregon
Office- 541.767.3778
Mobile- 541-501-1197
qhartman at lane.k12.or.us






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