[K12OSN] Managing identical logins...

[Tom Lisjac]

We are finishing up an install of K12LTSP 4.2.0 at the Fox Meadow
Middle School library here in Colorado Springs. There are 16 ThinkNIC
clients and everything is working very well... thanks for all the
effort it took to create this fine distribution!

We have a final issue to resolve before we can deploy the system that
involves the way the school manages it's users. Rather then logging in
individually, the kids all use the same class name... which creates
instance collisions for Mozilla and OpenOffice. There are a lot of
classes and I'm using winbind/pam to do domain authentication and
create the home directories dynamically. This makes it easy for the
Windows oriented admins to manage the class accounts and helped us
sell the Linux approach in the first place.

I can't change the login policy and need to find a solution that will
support multiple identical logins. I've tried appending REMOTE_HOST to
the username (ie: /home/user-ws234.ltsp) and renaming the home
directory in the gdm/PreSession script but gdm seems to have already
decided about what the user's home directory is and complains about it
not being there. I've also done some experimenting with the
pam_mkhomedir module without success.

I was wondering if anyone could suggest a way of solving this problem?
The teachers and staff are enthusiastic about the system and are
anxious to start using it.

Thanks!

Tom Lisjac
Webmaster - Harrison School District Two
Colorado Springs, Colorado