[Fwd: Re: [K12OSN] Generic Accounts?]

[Peter Scheie]

Moon wrote:
> Moon wrote:
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Gerald Drouillard [mailto:gerrylist at drouillard.ca] 
>> Sent: Friday, October 10, 2008 03:10 PM
>> To: Support list for open source software in schools.
>> Subject: Re: [K12OSN] Generic Accounts?
>>
>> Jamie Lists wrote:
>>> We're sprinkling LTSP clients all over a school in my district. I need
>>> to have a generic account for kids to use.
>>> The problem is if i make one account called student for instance. They
>>> all have the same home directory, which is bad.
>>> The only other way i can think of is to make 50 generic accounts and
>>> then tell the kids.. ok on this client you need to login as student38.
>>> Doesn't seem like such a great solution.
>>>
>>> Ideas?
>> Autologin based on mac address.  You can even have those accounts 
>> "reset" to a clean state on login.  Look at some of my previous postings 
>> on kiosk for the scripts and stuff.
>>
>> Gerald, I too am interested in a more user (student) friendly login and
> easy
>> user admin solution for our school. However, I didn't see any kiosk info
>> listed when I did a search for: Gerald Drouillard kiosk, could it possibly
>> be listed on some other website?
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Peter Scheie [mailto:peter at scheie.homedns.org] 
>> Sent: Friday, October 10, 2008 07:44 PM
>> To: moon at smbis.com; Support list for open source software in schools.
>> Subject: Re: [K12OSN] Generic Accounts?
>>
>> You don't mention what version you're running, but for K12LTSP-EL5 see 
>>
> http://k12ltsp.org/mediawiki/index.php/A_more_complete_How-To_for_setting_up
> _autologin_of_clients_using_Gnome_%26_GDM
>>
>> Peter
>>
> 
> Peter, I don't know if you recall this entry you made on the LTSP wiki back
> in 2006, but this same problem is what I am having right now. The patched
> gdm is now obsolete and the one that is currently installed has the same
> problem. Do you know if Andrew Ziem ever posted the actual source file
> and/or submitted it to the gnome team for inclusion?
> 
> "The GDM that is shipped with Fedora Core 5 (used in K12LTSP version 5) is
> broken, such that all thin clients will display, on their login screens,
> "/usr/bin/autologin| will login in X seconds". When the timer gets to zero,
> those clients that should autologin will do so, but those that should not
> will go black briefly and then the GDM greeter will restart with a bit of an
> initial 'jump & wiggle'. This doesn't hurt anything but it's annoying to
> look at, and isn't the way it should work. Andrew Ziem provided a patched
> GDM in RPM format that fixes this problem. A How-To for setting up autologin
> with this patch GDM is available on the K12LTSP wiki.
> 
> -- PetreScheie - 22 Nov 2006"
> 
Ah, yes, I need to update that page.  To make this work on K12LTSP-EL5, you can
use the gdm from Fedora 6 this way: Download the source rpm file for gdm from
Fedora 6; you can find it at
http://archives.fedoraproject.org/pub/archive/fedora/linux/core/updates/6/SRPMS/gdm-2.16.5-2.fc6.src.rpm

Then, as root, run 'rpmbuild --rebuild gdm-2.6.16.5-2.fc6.src.rpm'.  (Depending
on what you have installed on your system, you may get some errors about missing
dependencies; just use yum to install them all.  And rpmbuild comes from the
rpm-build package, which you can also install with yum.)  When rpmbuild
finishes, you'll have an rpm for a new gdm:
/usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/gdm-2.16.5-2.i386.rpm

Install this with
rpm -Uvh /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/gdm-2.16.5-2.i386.rpm

And then you'll need to restart gdm which will kick anyone logged in via GUI,
including you.  But then the timed auto-login should work.  I'll add this to
that wiki page.

Peter