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I decided to teach to my students (10-13 years old) pc and software using a live USB distribution of edubuntu. I can't erase Windows XP becuase it used by other teachers and using a live USB is faster for me than installing dual boot partitioning and so on. But there is a problem. When the system is ready the students can go in nautilus and erase Windows files because they have permissions. What must I do? Can I change permission? Is the change permanent?

muru
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omar lazzari
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  • You could make a custom live USB after removing the NTFS drivers (probably in package ntfs-3g). I suppose you're trying to prevent accidental deletion. Because once the students realise they can make their own USBs and boot to the PC... poof! admin access. – muru Sep 14 '15 at 22:28
  • Read this for some hints. – hmayag Sep 14 '15 at 22:35
  • If one of the answers below helped you, don't forget to click the grey ☑ at the left of their text, which means Yes, this answer is valid! ;-) – Fabby Sep 17 '15 at 21:20

2 Answers2

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Since this would imply dropping sudo rights for the students anyway, a quick workaround could be this one:

  1. Boot from the Live USB
  2. Make sure all the partitions you don't want the student to access are mounted
  3. Open Terminal with Ctrl+Alt+T
  4. Change the ubuntu user's password: run passwd, hit Enter, type a password, type the password again and hit Enter
  5. Close the terminal: run exit
  6. Start the Guest user's session

This way being the partitions mounted in the ubuntu user's session there's no way for them to be mounted on the Guest user's session as well (unless by switching back to the ubuntu user's session in order to unmount them, which can't be done without knowing the password).

kos
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You can just unmount partitions that you don't want people to mess with. That would have additional pro of not tempting anybody to try to get there by just not showing any windows partition whatsoever.

  1. Boot from the Live USB
  2. Open Terminal
  3. Find out windows partition by f.ex. mount | grep ntfs (if it's ntfs filesystem, or vfat, if it's fat32)
  4. sudo umount [mountpoint of windows filesystem] (it will probably be someting like /media/[something])
  5. Exit terminal
Marek Bettman
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  • No, this way the drives / partitions would be still visible in Files; also they could be mounted again easily just by clicking on their entry – kos Sep 15 '15 at 11:07
  • Hm, yea, I guess you're right - I think too much in terms of command-line only systems :) On a side note - would unloading ntfs module after unmounting also made unmounted disk invisible in GUI, or does that just takes entries from fstab and presents them? – Marek Bettman Sep 15 '15 at 11:35
  • No idea, however thinking about this again in this case just plainly uninstalling ntfs-3g should do the trick (aside from the fact that of course sudo rights should be inhibited as well to prevent a reinstallation) – kos Sep 15 '15 at 12:54