[K12OSN] teaching kids sys admin with VM's

Rob Owens rob.owens at biochemfluidics.com
Fri Jan 18 15:39:14 UTC 2008



Robert Arkiletian wrote:
> On Jan 17, 2008 6:11 PM, James P. Kinney III
> <jkinney at localnetsolutions.com> wrote:
>> I can see many, MANY issues with this setup. Not the least of which is
>> kids with root access AT ALL on a networked machine.
> 
> What's the worst thing you could do if you were a cracker student in
> the environment that I described to Les?
> 
>> An idea is to skip the installation part and provide vmware-player
>> images for them to admin. This way you can lock down the configs (until
>> they figure out how to change things) and can provide scenarios for them
>> to look at/tweak/setup/fix, etc. Vmware-player is free and lighter
>> weight than full VMWare desktop.
> 
> I'm not scared of them messing up their config files. So they bork
> their OS beyond repair. They just delete the VM and start again. It
> also defeats the purpose of having them learn how to setup raid and
> everything else. I'm hoping I will be able to create multple virtual
> HD so kids can learn how to setup a RAID system. Then stop the VM,
> remove one of the drives and see the U_ in /proc/mdstat, then tell
> them to add another drive and resync the mirror. That would be cool!!!
> 
>> Server side is a challenge as each thin client will need RAM, plus the
>> server itself AND now each VM. With the player, you pre-set the RAM
>> size. However, if you use full VMWare, the students can change the RAM
>> size for a VM. That has the great potential for bringing down your
>> server hard and fast.
> 
> Hmm. This is a problem. I can't allow kids to choose how much actual
> resources they give their VM's. I have to be able to set a limit on
> the amount of ram, HD size they can allocate. Also I don't want them
> to run more than one VM each. I think this might be more difficult
> than I first thought.
> 

How about this.  You create a virtual machine for each student, and you 
own them.  Create a bridged interface on the host machine for each 
virtual machine, and let the students ssh into them.

Positives:  You control how much ram is allocated, and the students 
can't start/stop the virtual machines without your authorization.
Negatives:  Students will have to install the OS at your desk (or logged 
in to your account -- or a special account made just for this case) 
because you own the virtual machine.  The virtual machines will also be 
visible to the local network (but possibly you could firewall them off 
so that the network won't be brought down by a rogue DHCP server).

I'd also like to recommend you try VirtualBox.  I've been using it on 
Debian with great success.  Its interface looks like VMware, but it was 
a quicker installation than VMware (last time I tried VMware, anyway). 
There is an open source version that is not crippled in any serious way. 
  The debian package is virtualbox-ose.

-Rob

>> As for teaching an installation, the RedHat derivatives have the ability
>> to record an installation process as a flash movie file (or maybe that
>> was doing it over vnc - I forget). That is a GREAT documentation tool!!
>>
> 
> No doubt, but nothing beats doing.
> 
>> Since you have old PII's you could use those with old hard drives and
>> let them install there. A net install is fast but a CD install is
>> typical. When done, just unplug the hard drive again :)
>>
> 
> No go. I have multiple blocks and don't want kids opening up real
> hardware that has to work every period. In addition have you tried
> installing a recent linux distro on a PII with 128MB of ram. :)
> 
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