unionfs overlay on flashdrive?

[jamdis]

Okay, this is a wacky idea.

I know ubermix is designed for a 1:1 environment, but I teach several classes in a computer lab.  I would really like to find a way to allow each student to have their own instance of ubermix in my computer lab.

The problem, of course, is that the students are sharing computers, and I would like to maintain the ability to move students from computer to computer with minimum hassle.

Would it be possible (or even desirable) to install the base system on each computer's hard disk, but put the overlay on a USB thumb drive so that students can plug in the flash drive, boot up, and have their own Ubermix running with their docs / customizations?

[jnetman1]

It's theoretically possible to move the user changes and home partitions to a USB key, however there would be a lot of risk of lost data/failures, as USB keys are somewhat unreliable. I'm not sure this would all work, but if you want to try it, bear in mind that the user changes and home partitions are mounted by e2fs label USER and HOME respectively. So what you would have to do is use something like gparted to create 2 linux partitions on the key and format them ext4, with the labels USER and HOME. Then you'd need to boot ubermix in generic+single user mode, turn swap off (swapoff -a), umount /home, fdisk /dev/sda, delete partitions 2 and 3 on the disk, and write your changes. Next, insert the USB key, reboot, and cross your fingers. No promises.

[jamdis]

Thanks for the reply.  I'm glad to know it's possible, but I agree with you that it sounds dicy due to the unreliable nature of flash drives.  I'm going to continue searching for an elegant way to have multiple users per computer with Ubermix AND allow users to switch computers with minimum hassle.

I'll let you know if I figure anything out.

[jnetman1]

One of the most popular mechanisms is Auto-reset, which you can read about here: http://wiki.ubermix.org/page/Auto-Reset