Nije Shikhi, and GNOME on 12 Volt DC
Posted by Sayamindu 2 years, 11 months ago
Some of us in Kolkata have been working on an experiment called “Nije Shikhi” (নিজে শিখি), a program where young children (mostly from underpriviledged/rural backgrounds) are simply given access to a computer, and allowed to self learn, with minimal/no adult supervision.
The computers to be used for that are based on the Geode platform, and are powered by a 12 volt DC battery (which is charged by solar cells). The entire setup was recently demo’ed live at the inaugural session of the Tech Fest of Heritage Institute of Technology (where I spoke on how students might get started with contributing to Free/Open Source Software), and the student response was absolutely fantastic.
Currently, the plan is to run a somewhat locked down version of GNOME on the machines, since these will be mostly unattended installations in the remote districts of our state. However, we are trying to investigate methods to provide full freedom to the learners while making sure that the systems remain usable even if someone manages to mess up the settings badly (rm -rf $HOME on a periodic basis??).
i wish it was easier for me to get my hands on hardware like this in new zealand, the less power generation needed the better for the environment.
pity about the high price tags that follow too.
at least some children will get exposure, they are our future after all.
I would have the computers login/logout a couple of times a day, and at each reboot, nuke the homedir on logout and use pam_mkhomedir on login.
@Casey
.
Actually we are running pretty off-the-shelf hardware here. The Geode box is from AMD, the monitor is an ordinary 15 in TFT, which is driven by a 12 volt DC to 230 volt AC converter (which is quite popular in our country as they can run television sets off 12 volt car batteries). The battery in that “prototype” has been actually ripped off from an APC UPS
@Corey
Yeah – those are my present thoughts as well. However, the issue is that it might be a good idea to let the children create and save files – someone might just discover GIMP and create something with it over a few days. Nuking $HOME will not work in such a situation).
One option may be to modify the Sabayon profile applications scripts so that the settings are re created from scratch every day – in that way, user data is preserved.
Make a single user with auto login. Make two boot options – one just boots, the other removes all hidden files (configuration files) from the home directory and then boots.
Just erasing files at random without a request from the users is a bit strange.
awesome..
Security factor ta kichu glibcr opor wrapper likhe kora jete pare..
like:
int unlink(const char *pathname)
{
char *undeletables[] = {
“SOME1″,
“SOME2″
.
.
};
/*
implement checks here
*/
int (*orig)(const char *p);
orig = dlsym(RTLD_NEXT, “unlink”);
orig(pathname);
}
compile it as shared lib and put it in /etc/ld.so.preload
in that case, even if somebody does a rm -rf /&, you can handle that at a lower level..
just a thought..
Wow, I’m very impressed by this. How much does each machine cost?
As for the problem, perhaps just check if there’s a certain home directory on boot and create it if not? For more serious problems perhaps leave some kind of a partimage DVD behind? You can get a cheap DVD-R drive somewhere for less than 900 rupees now, I think.
Good luck!
@Aigars
Yeah – deleting all the hidden directories seems to be a good option. However, I don’t want to blindly delete, and I am trying to come up with a more filtered list of directories we need to delete.
@Abhisek
This does seem to be a nice solution – however, the issue is more of what files not to delete, rather than preventing deletions.
@George
The total cost of the entire rig including the housing, solar panels, etc come to around USD 750. As per the data obtained by the hole in the wall project (the original inspiration for the project), using this kind of system, around 300 kids can become computer literate in 3 months using a single box. So we have approx 1000 kids per year – so the cost per year/per kid is less than USD 1.
Regarding DVD, we are currently thinking of using USB sticks for backup/quick restore, since the geode box already has four USB ports.
If you are not religious about gnome, then you should give KDE a chance. It has a kiosk mode which is exactly what you need. Its basically a configuration method to disallow users from doing certain things, like starting a konsole or removing icons from the taskbar.
But also things like not allowing a ‘print’ menu item/icon on apps, if that’s what you need.
Very nice idea!
I need a Solar cell/ Panel of 12 V , 3V and 6 volt . Please give me the detail.