Virtual Live Linux for Students

[a123oclock]

Hi all,

 

Not sure if this is the best place to post so please let me know if not.

 

As part of the computing GCSE this year the students have to run bash commands, i was thinking that the best way of doing this was to run a live version of linux using VirtualBox. The teacher doesnt want to use Cygwin if possible.

 

What i'd like to know is how you guys have achieved this and what tips you may have to securely give students access to a linux terminal

 

Thank you in advance

[icemonkey]

At Uni, our CS dept "acquired" an old server from IT Services and set it up as a stand-alone ubuntu server in the department. They just bought some cheap components to make sure it could handle all 80 of us connecting.

They also spent a bit of time setting up user areas for each of us before we started so we just had to login and change the password.

Connected using putty, wrote/ran the scripts we needed to and logged out again. Cheap and cheerful and we managed to get a 20 credit module out of it

 

Granted Uni means bigger budgets, old servers just lying around and students with a bit more common sense but I've often wondered whether it would be feasible in a school especially with ICT being replaced with Computer Science.

[dhicks]

They also spent a bit of time setting up user areas for each of us before we started so we just had to login and change the password.

 

You can join a Linux machine to a Windows network with Samba, so you can have pupils log in with their usual usernames and password. You can even have it mount their home folder, if you want. Even basic hardware or a fairly minimal virtual machine should be able to handle 20 text-only logins, you aren't going to need any particarly fancy hardware.

[3s-gtech]

We've done it with VirtualBox and the RDP extension. Users can then connect to their own Linux VM based off a template using the normal Windows mstsc. That VM is theirs to abuse, and can be rebuilt whenever, but it has their AD home area mounted to save any work.