Lab Dilemma: Security v. Operability
by Will Paicius · in Torque in Education · 11/26/2006 (9:05 pm) · 8 replies
Howdy,
Ohlone College has just purchased 10 Full seats of Torque but we cannot install them. Our security policy is strict: Students save their work on their own flash drive or email it home at the end of class. Since students cannot write to our hard disks, Torque, Compilers, even prop builders will not work.
I am sure that someone has faced and solved this problem before. Please let me know what best practice for this issue looks like, so I can get my hands around it, and hear the sounds of happy fingers on keyboards.
Thanks,
Will
Ohlone College has just purchased 10 Full seats of Torque but we cannot install them. Our security policy is strict: Students save their work on their own flash drive or email it home at the end of class. Since students cannot write to our hard disks, Torque, Compilers, even prop builders will not work.
I am sure that someone has faced and solved this problem before. Please let me know what best practice for this issue looks like, so I can get my hands around it, and hear the sounds of happy fingers on keyboards.
Thanks,
Will
About the author
#2
12/07/2006 (10:23 am)
We here have our computers locked up also - but what we DID do was individually turn the TORQUE directory to be Useable by ALL USERS, and the rest of the drive is locked. This keeps everything else secure and allows us to control what is used on each system.
#3
Its basically an issue for ANY development when you think about it. Or at least any development of any significant scale.
I think Chris's idea is sound. Make a single writable drive.
We have a "student" directory, where they can write anything they want. It gets cleaned at power on time.
12/18/2006 (1:00 pm)
Not really a solvable thing other than running torque from the pen/flash drive too (not a good idea).Its basically an issue for ANY development when you think about it. Or at least any development of any significant scale.
I think Chris's idea is sound. Make a single writable drive.
We have a "student" directory, where they can write anything they want. It gets cleaned at power on time.
#4
12/18/2006 (1:08 pm)
How do you lock your drives? Are you using something like Deep Freeze or a Windows Group Policy? Microsoft Shared Computer Toolkit? Does your computing oversight council require a vote for a change such as making a single directory writable? 
#5
12/18/2006 (1:31 pm)
We had this problem in my programming class back in high school (non Torque stuff). The student accounts didn't have the permissions needed for writing code. The end result was everyone in the class was given stripped faculty accounts (had all the permissions we needed and didn't give us access to faculty applications). Of course, they were watching those accounts like hawks. 
#6
12/21/2006 (9:15 am)
At AiTO we do a variation of Chris Frankie's approach: the drive has two volumes, C: for everyone, system, apps, etc. and a D: volume writable only for use by the Game Art & Design students.
#7
1. Torque requires something (we're not sure yet perhaps it writes to the Registery or something; I haven't asked the designers yet) that must be ran with Administrative Privlages.
2. We setup the directory and a special Group that only the students to this class have access to.
3. The Torque is installed into the Directory and the Group is added as a Local Admin (The ONLY person that can run the SDK for some reason - perhaps because of the problem with #1 above?)
4. This seems to work great - except sometimes the students can't compile new DSO with the RTS Kit - instead it just errors out and tells us that we are using a bad Script File.
10/23/2007 (12:58 pm)
Yeah - as for a refresh for what we did - a complete overview:1. Torque requires something (we're not sure yet perhaps it writes to the Registery or something; I haven't asked the designers yet) that must be ran with Administrative Privlages.
2. We setup the directory and a special Group that only the students to this class have access to.
3. The Torque is installed into the Directory and the Group is added as a Local Admin (The ONLY person that can run the SDK for some reason - perhaps because of the problem with #1 above?)
4. This seems to work great - except sometimes the students can't compile new DSO with the RTS Kit - instead it just errors out and tells us that we are using a bad Script File.
#8
10/24/2007 (8:10 am)
Have you looked at a DeepFreeze or Ghost solution for managing your labs? DeepFreeze has been especially helpful in some of our labs. 
Torque Owner Tim Holt