TheydonBois

And as pointed out, this happened six months ago, but I want to know how it all tunred out, and how much he charged

Please test this on non live data first, (or replicate a smaller version of what you have): Remove the PRIMARY permissions from the folders above, then import all their names from SIMS or equivalent into an excel file, then concatenate all the text from the colums into one text that you copy into a batch file and run. Something like: CACLS x:\pupils\intake x\Jack Sparrow /E /T /C /G PRIMARY:C CACLS x:\pupils\intake x\Fred Blogs/E /T /C /G PRIMARY:C CACLS x:\pupils\intake x\Bobby Ewing /E /T /C /G PRIMARY:C CACLS x:\pupils\intake x\Fred Astire /E /T /C /G PRIMARY:C CACLS x:\pupils\intake x\Wilma Rubble /E /T /C /G PRIMARY:C ...which will apply the PRIMARY account with write permissions to the user folders only, and not the ones above. That way the only files they should be able to move and delete into each other are ones within the students name above. Not sure how it will all work with Home Directory as only using one account still means that Fred can go into Bettys folder and delete her work within the folder anyway, even if he cannot delete the Betty root folder.

Steve, do you know the rough cost of this?

Students: Year of Entry + First Three Letters of First Name + First Three Letters of Surname Staff: ST + First Three Letters of First Name + First Three Letters of Surname Office Admin: First Initial and then First Two Letters of Surname Resulting in: 13THEBOI, STTHEBOI or TBO for me. We have had some dupes, but they are rare.

Isnt that too far back then? If you have one user say PRIMARY and it has permissions at that level, it needs to be reset to be at the level of the name of the students. For instance, my setup for kids would be E:\Users\ then folders containing all the student logins (they have seperate logins) at the Users folder level however, they have no security permissions, but if I checked E:\USERS\THEYDONBOIS then THEYDONBOIS has Modify permissions. Your generic logon account needs to only have access at the PUPIL NAME level. Sorry if thats not clear, if not, then I will try and explain it better later

How much can be locked down with this setup though?

What security permissions do you have on the \\server\pupils\ level?

Cheers David, I will double check my settings against what you have suggested.

That simply cannot be right, and totally defeats the object of creating seperate media sets. I have created two jobs, one for each server, that I want to allocate to Monday 1 for instance. I then create a media set that contains my Monday 1 tape. Why on earth does it ignore specific instructions? All the tapes have to have allow append and no over write period as other wise the second server cannot write to the same tape as the first for any one given day. Edit: Just to add that the other servers are setup in the same way you mention, one job for all days that picks any random tape from the pool. Its just this one needs to be set speciifcally to make sure two servers from the same day back up to the same tape.

We have a superloader and are using BUE2010. I have 15 jobs set to specific tapes (Mon - Friday, week 1 -3) as I also have a remote agent backing up another server to the same tape. This allows me to have one tape with two servers from the same day. What I am finding though is mysteriously, tapes are moving from one media set to another, so Monday 3 will end up writing to Friday 2, and when checking the media set, I find Friday 2 alongside Monday 3 in the backup pool. They are Ultrium 3 400/800Gb tapes, the first server backs up 250-300, and the second server is backing up less than 50gb. TIA!

Three servers that back up via Symantec to Autoloaders LTO-3, around 400GB/server full backups each night, tapes ejected in morning. 15 tapes in and 15 tapes 'offsite' (other end of the school). End of month tapes stored offsite which also takes tapes out of rotation. Other servers are on NTBackup to RAID 5 terastations that are robocopied every weekend to offsite Terastations, and these servers that we have not yet got to a tape solution are backed up to tape during the terms as a psudo end of month solution via Symantec and Remote Agent.

Us too. We were told that they are looking into it, but a fix would not be coming anytime soon.

This is true and it would have been a course we may have considered - I think that for us though, this would have been a logistical nightmare and not one that could be implemented. Dont get me wrong and I very happy with all the responses given, and it helped us to come to what I hope is a complete solution, but with a class size of 27-29 kids and non IT teachers using IT rooms for their subject meant it would be very hard to implement with 100% guarentee that the appropriate department was being billed.

And who is going to monitor this day in and day out? Yes we have had a cost approaching £1000 in lost RAM which we are not replacing, we are lucky enough to have 4Gb in each machine and during the installation of these plates, are reducing all the PCs to 3Gb that had more giving us spare RAM to use in places that lost theres. Our costs have been £500 RAM purchases, £60ish acrylic materials, a few hours O/T in DT Tech time, and my O/T to install, but this will resolve the issue. Sitting on a webcam all day long requires extra manpower, and plus how are you supposed to be extra vigalent to 11 rooms that probably require 2 to 3 cameras each? But it does not actually resolve the issue, plus as they are not stealing all the ram, in most cases the PC still boots up. How can you prove a departments lesson had x amount of RAM stolen without knowing EXACTLY how many where in there at the beginning of every lesson? This would require opening the cases as Windows would only report RAM it has installed correctly, while some sticks may be present just lifted slightly where the student was disturbed, meaning departments are charged incorrectly...

Looking good. No further 'attacks' in the completed areas and a teacher even caught a student with his hands in the till so to speak and is on a 5 day suspension, and hopefully an explusion as he is apparently a troublesome student anyway. Which I think is probably code for theiving toerag, but cannot confirm for sure. Details on Materials Used: 5mm thick Acrylic (we are using black so it appears as part of the PC), cut to 22mm high and 128mm long using Techsofts 2d Design software cut by a 55w LaserCamm by our excellent DT Technician. This is dropped into the slot where the floppy drive screws would fix with the DVD drawer put back into place above. The plate cannot more to either side nor be pushed upwards as it is held in place by the DVD above.

Thanks for this - just rolled out 7.1 to my Tech rooms.

Just to clarify, the solution I mentioned a few posts back is what we are currently rolling out. I did one classroom on Friday evening, with the rest to follow shortly. With the perspex coming it at around £15 a sheet and approx 150 units being able to be cut from it, the material cost is very low compared to buying floppy drives or card readers. Basically manhours are the only expense and as some 400 PCs are effected, this is something that cannot be done quickly. I will add pics and confirm the material details as well as update this thread in a few weeks to confirm whether its worked or not.....

While taking the new Viglen PCs at our school and complaining to the ICT teacher that the side grills that say 'Do not cover' may as well say 'this is how you break me'. I say someone could pour a drink down the grill like this, picking up what I thought was an empty cup on the teachers table and making a pouring motion, slightly tip the cup up. It wasnt, but thankfully it splashed on the side of the table.....

Just to let you all know, I took this idea and with the help from our excellent Technology techs got a piece of 5mm thick perspex cut to the following size with a laser cutter: 128mm x 22mm. This fits ito the slot where the screws of the floppy go. I have some pics and will add them later if interested, along with the exact specs of the perspex. I am also getting some double height ones cut for those machines where they have trashed the DVDROm and will let you know the final size on those as well. Edit: Sorry - 128mm, not 18mm!

The cost for those boxes would be huge, and I like the secret AV dust but as my college pointed out, thsi starts to make us into policemen rather than getting the issue resolved. It may be that we use the wood idea - Something slightly thicker than the blanking pate and a little longer will fit nicely within the recessed area an inch or so inside the case. We also have to make sure no damage is done to the unit in case of Dell repairs etc that could invalidate our warrenty/licencing agreement.

I meant removing the earth.....

Sadly, not proof. They dont need to log on to steal the ram, despite the fact that it is more than likely that they are taking the ram at the end of the lesson after they used it. Lets just say we have had incidents before that should have been resolved this way, and didnt. /agree I would love to be able to stop the rooms from being used to 'teach a lesson' but we cant, and the Head is unlikely to hold up 6 rooms lessons for even 1 day. The Dell have a plastic front plate designed to pop out easily, with no metal plate behind that. Ah, the good old days when you ripped your hands to shreds on a razor sharp edge of a case.... I am very very annoyed, especailly as the original room that has 5 down had 4 down during the half term just gone and I fixed all of those only to have the same room targetted again. We suspect that the owners of the room are not to blame and its when the room is loaned to other teachers who are obviously not double checking things at the end of a lesson. See my email below - I hope to push things a little to get it looked at, but I suspect it will be ignored, they will buy the card readers and write off what has happened as an excercise. Now I am known for my 'cunning plans' regarding the things that I would like to do to Students who have damaged 'my' equipment, but I suspect that would be a step too far. Sadly.

Just fired this email off to all the relant 'owner' teachers of the room, head teacher of ICT, my boss ( currently off sick) and the Burser: Just to say that a IT request from xxxxxxx in RoomX has revealed that another 5 machines in his room are down due to RAM being taken from the machines, including ones that I recently replaced two weeks or so ago. xxxxxx also has 1 machine down with the same problem. A solution to this needs to be urgently looked at - myself and xxxxx have already exhausted the 24 sticks of RAM we had from PCs that had been decommissioned due to a blown PSU's, and now I need in the region of 15 or more sticks to repair the six machines in RoomX and RoomY. One thought was too glue the blanking plates down, but this would be a little more than an extra speed bump in their time and seeing as how they apparently have enough time to be able to stick their hand inside a unit and dexterously remove RAM with the tips of their fingers. The gluing method is also hampered by the fact that lots of blanking plates have already been removed prior to this particular method of vandalism became apparent and also that Dell cannot supply us new ones to replace the ones missing. A free solution could be to ensure that cover staff that use the room are vigilant enough to stop this from happening in the first place, or simply ensure that a class is not dismissed if a computer is not working at the end of a lesson when it clearly was at the start of it. There are no guarantees however that this would not happen and we would still be required to keep a stock or RAM for when they go missing again. Another solution is to visit the machines in the larger rooms and fit a floppy disk drive into the slot, even if it's not connected, simply to stop them from gaining access. Floppy drives are becoming increasing rare these days and so have increased in price from costing less than 5 to being 15 upwards, so perhaps a card reader such as the following: Akasa 3.5 Internal Multi Memory Card Reader - Misco.co.uk We are talking about some 200 units though - and a cost of 1400 (which I am sure xxxxxxx could whittle down a notch) - compared to the 40 sticks of RAM (24 used and 15 to be fitted) that currently have a value approaching 800, which is only fixing machines already broken, and not resolving the issue. Regards,

We thought about that, but the fact that they are pushing in the ones already there means its another deterant rather than a fix. Plus, there are so many of these blanking plates already missing and we have already put a request into Dell for new ones which they cannot supply. Thankyou for the reply though.

We have a large PC network of around 500 PCs, and currently have around 200 Dell Optiplex 745's, 200 Dell 755, and 100 Viglen machines (all on a 3 year lease on rotation hence three different models). We had a spate of PCs being trashed by Students as they tripped the dual voltage PSU on the 745's, breaking around a dozen or so before we went round to all the 745's with a plastic laser cut covering to protect them. Now the [insert your chosen expletive here] have been popping the blanking plate under the CD drawer (which they have also broken probably 30 to 40 of in the last two years) and stealing the RAM, in some cases grabbing all 4 sticks. Anyone else had this problem, and what did you do to resolve it? It seems that the lessons run by teachers that dont 'own' the room are to blame, and tbh, I think we are looking at buying a flopy or card reader to fill the slot simply to stop them geting the RAM, which is now at around 50 sticks lost.