Re: Too many default groups in Skolelinux' LDAP schema?

[Stefan Padberg <epost@stefan-padberg.de>]

Hi,

may I suggest a different approach to this problem?

There should be a script on the file server. It can copy files from the 
teachers directory to the pupils directory (="austeilen/distribute") or it 
copies the files of the pupils in the teachers directory (="einsammeln/call 
back[?]").

For being able to achieve this, the script needs root rights because it must 
chmod 777 the home directories of the pupils before the copy action can take 
place and chmod 700 afterwards.

The teacher could make a list for the pupils of each class, and the script 
would take this list somehow as a parameter. This lists could be imported as 
a CSV file and could be administrated with a Webmin account on the file 
server.

(An alternative to Webmin could be to start the script via ssh-tunnel which 
needs the ssh keys of the teachers to be generated and distributed on the 
different machines. Experts say this solution is more safe than the webmin 
solution.)

The script could be allowed to do this in the sudoers file of the file server, 
just for the group teachers. So, finally you need just to groups: teachers 
and pupils. At least, for the resolution of this problem.

When I visited the Didacta in Cologne some weeks ago, I saw a working solution 
for this problem with the SuSE Open Exchange for School Server. But as I do 
not have 500 Euro to buy it I don't know how they have solved this problem. 
But maybe somebody else can check this out?

From my teaching experience I must say project directories or open directories 
in the Windows style writabel to everybody is not a good solution. Maybe in 
some situation it's o.k. But in day to day teaching practice I need a 
mechanism to distribute with one click some files or a directory to the 
pupils in the class room.

Regards
Stefan Padberg
Wuppertal, Germany

--------------------------------------------
Am Mittwoch, 17. März 2004 15:13 schrieb Bjørn Ove Grøtan:
> > A work-around could be that a teacher would be a member of their own
> > class and have a new account for every course they teach. You could
> > also give the teachers accounts for every class they teach. It's
> > possible to give them identical password for every account. Then the
> > teacher get the real responsibility for handeling a Learning Management
> > System-issue at file and directory level.
>
> No offence - but this is a solution one should avoid - we can find other
> ways around it.. maybe not on a filesystem-level with regards to max num
> of groups in nfs, but certainly on a file-server/lms.
>
> --
> Bjørn Ove Grøtan