[Lias] Linux on the desktop - NO?

[Simon Bryan]

Robert McLeay said:
> To create a standard desktop you can do the following:
>
> Create a user, customize the user's desktop to your liking.
>
> Copy that user's home directory to /etc/skel

> Then, when you create a new user, all the settings will be copied over.

Nice theory, but it doesn't seem to work here! Have done that a number of times for
no result.

> Additionally, if you don't want students to be able to customise
> .bashrc, and the environment, you can crontab this script for every
> night (for redhat, assuming that a user's group is the username)
>
> So, they'll be able to customise it, but every night it'll revert to
> your settings. This script won't delete extra desktop icons they've
> added - and I'd suggest testing this first - I wrote it on the spot.
>
> ###Start###
> #!/usr/bin/perl
> @users = `ls /home/`;
> foreach my($username) @users {
>     `cp -rf /etc/skel/ /home/$username`;
>     `chown $username.$username /home/$username`;
> }
> ###End###



> Also, a good idea, if you're using a Win/Linux environment, is to have
> the Linux server contain ALL the home directories, and export them via
> Samba. Then you can have your startup scripts for windows mount them as
> the user's home dir. You can do it the other way around, but it's
> harder.
>
> It's relatively easy to map drives from a variety of sources.
>
> If you require to give them access to a drive with username/password
> auth, chmod +s smbmnt and smbumount . Then you can have users mount smb
> shares without giving them the ability to arbitrarily mount local
> drives.

All our home directories are on a Linux server, just not the LTS server. They are
shared with Samba and mappe when the user logs in under Windows. I do have a script
that an individual user can run that will map their home drive to the LTS home
drive. However do not have a way of doing that automatically when a user logs in.
We use pam-mkhomedir to create the user home directory on the fly on first login,
until they do that the /home/username directory doesn't exist. What would be nice
would be able to put in the /etc/passwd file that the home directory was
//otherserver/home/username

Will look at the /etc/skel method again and also try out your script. Thanks.
____________________
Simon Bryan
IT Manager
OLMC Parramatta