Computer Languages / Programming Suite

[caffrey]

How do you do it ?

I'm thinking of a few ideas :-

 

1). Dedicated suite on its own network and domain. (No budget!)

2). Raspberry Pi (Each student has their own sdcard) But doesn't cover VB etc. (No budget!)

3). Virtual Machine (Install Virtualbox and click on the image) Not sure how to make this work - how can you revert any changes made to the image?

 

Students can't currently compile anything as there's no exe allowed in their areas also no access to C: etc.

[tmcd35]

I'd go Virtual Machine personally. I'd have a master virtual hard disk stored away with the image set up how I like it. That can be copied to the virtual disks for the individual machines. I'd then use snapshots so I could roll back each virtual machine after changes have been made. If there is a problem with the snapshots you still have the master copy of the virtual hard disk you can use to overwrite the the bad image on the virtual machine.

[pcstru]

3. Use a script to start VirtualBox. Before starting, copy a 'clean' (golden image) disc container from which the guest will start. A guest can talk to a folder on the host, so it should be possible to script startup and shutdown events that unzip and then zip-up a student project and transfer them to their network storage.

[tmcd35]

Maybe Windows SteadyState would be helpful here? (Windows SteadyState - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

[caffrey]

Any examples? I could use group policy preferences for the copying I think, and use new user accounts that are for just programming only. I'll play with virtualbox today and see.

Forgot about deepfreeze too (steadystate) but this would possibly require new machines - maybe unless I tie deepfreeze to certain accounts only.

 

(wish they'd actually requested this BEFORE starting programming classes ;p)

[caffrey]

anyone seen this? comments? Going to have a play this morning PConMe for Education© | Free Home & Education software downloads at SourceForge.net

[Steve21]

anyone seen this? comments? Going to have a play this morning PConMe for Education© | Free Home & Education software downloads at SourceForge.net

 

Used Qemu before for a few virtual ARM machines, but to be honest don't really see any benefit of it at all over other free products like virtualbox/vmware etc, if all you want is a virtual x86/64 machine.

 

Only things to consider as always is things like by default it gives internet access to virtual machines etc, thus no lock downs apply on it etc etc. Downloaded games etc etc.

 

Steve

[caffrey]

Supposed to be getting a suite of raspberry pi soon too, problem being with software / file restrictions etc. students can't compile anything, and I'm being asked for a working solution! Personally I recommended a programming lab but knocked back due to space and budgetary restraints

 

*edit* just tried that pconme, its slow - not what I was looking for!

Edited November 21, 2012 by caffrey

[apeo]

BTW if you are going with virtualbox (or any other one to be fair), you could use immutable disks so changes made to the vm is not saved:

 

Chapter5.Virtual storage

[caffrey]

I've been looking at that, I'm trying to keep it as simple as possible - problems with students saving work etc. The raspberry pi is ok except no VB (afaik), most ideal scenario is a programming lab on its own domain - but that won't happen anytime soon.

[british_government]

If running windows 7, you can setup the machine to boot to a VHD, using ideas above just revert changes afterwards.

 

Windows 7

 

Just get prompted when the machine turns on weather to load normal school domain machine or programming backup machine

[apeo]

I've been looking at that, I'm trying to keep it as simple as possible - problems with students saving work etc. The raspberry pi is ok except no VB (afaik), most ideal scenario is a programming lab on its own domain - but that won't happen anytime soon.

 

A whole domain just for this seems OTT..

 

As to saving work, I give them a home directory where they can save exe to.

Edited November 21, 2012 by apeo
typo

[caffrey]

Wouldn't take much doing with a domain, vlan etc.

So i'm attempting a virtualbox machine with everything on, I'll keep a copy of the image and leave them to it. They can save their work to a usb stick.

Any tips on auto starting the VM in fullscreen? - I'm thinking of creating user accounts for programming and create a specific GPO so when they log in it'll go straight into a fullscreen VM.

[apeo]

You can use command line to boot up the vm:

 

VirtualBox --startvm NameOfVM --fullscreen

 

Think that works.

 

Starting it up when they login, not sure about that.