Restrictive Environment From School

[nukem]

Our school district is very closeminded about what students should be allowed to do on their computers. While they have given every student a laptop we are not allowed to do anything with them. We run in a very restricted mode were only certain apps are allowed to be run such as IE, Office, and a few other school related programs, we can not use any standard windows programs such as Explorer(for files) or the Start Menu(we use some Novell program we call "the box" to launch our programs), a school administrator has to approve and install hardware we can not do it ourselves, programs is another questionable thing since they do not allow anything to be installed without approval and think everything needs a site licence including open source software. Comming from a long Linux programming background I think there is no way our programming team will be able to do anything other then basic control in this sort of environment.

Before I goto the school and tell them this there are a couple things I am wondering. First of all does anything programming wise require to be running in administrative mode? Because everyone on the programming team runs Linux at home and are thus alot better at using a Linux environment how should I approch the school about dual-booting with Linux and which distro(we all use Gentoo)? How would you approch the school about this?

Thanks

nuke

[Adam Richards]

While I don't recommend or endorse this, you can just resize the partition with a boot disk and install whatever *nix flavor on the expanded space. Do keep in mind that there could be repercussions for you if you do this, depending on your school's technology policy.

On the other hand, you might want to just approach the principal with several members from your team and explain the situation that you're in and the need for free access to any number of programs during the build and competition seasons. Just ask to see him/her after school one day, and if your principal has any logic, he should approve the request.

[KenWittlief]

If the computers belong to the school, and every student is allowed to use one, then you clearly need separate computers for the teams programmers.

You dont need much of a PC or laptop for FIRST robotics programming. Our team used a 133MHz Pentium Thinkpad for a couple years, before they switched the link to USB.

It might be less hassle to get your hands on a couple cheap laptops for the team programmers. That way you can do what you want with them, and there wont be any issues with the school.

[Athena]

Well I go to the same school as nukem. We do not have access to the BIOS. So a boot disk wont work without other methods. As nukem said, we do not have administrative access on our laptops and probably will not get them even if we asked the school. As far as buying cheap latops. I dont know if we even have the funds for that this year. But its not a bad idea. So if anyone has any more ideas please tell us.

Thanks

[Bill_Hancoc]

i really dont know what im talking about but i think it might help. Would it be possible to just boot from a floppy and go from there?

[RoboMom]

contact your senior mentor, Paul Kloberg.
pkloberg@usfirst.org

[Pat Fairbank]

Originally Posted by Bill_Hancoc

i really dont know what im talking about but i think it might help. Would it be possible to just boot from a floppy and go from there?

Originally Posted by Athena

We do not have access to the BIOS.

It could be that the BIOS has been set to boot first from the hard disk, before any removable media. The only way to change that setting would be to manually reset the BIOS password (with a jumper) and that would probably be entering the realm of illegality since the laptops are technically the property of the school...

[MissInformation]

Originally Posted by Athena

Well I go to the same school as nukem. We do not have access to the BIOS. So a boot disk wont work without other methods. As nukem said, we do not have administrative access on our laptops and probably will not get them even if we asked the school. As far as buying cheap latops. I dont know if we even have the funds for that this year. But its not a bad idea. So if anyone has any more ideas please tell us.

Thanks

Find out if any of your teammates parents have any laptops to lend, or better yet, donate to the team, of if there are any local businesses who would donate any laptops.

Heidi

[NoodleKnight]

Just be straightfoward with your request and give reasons why your request should be granted. If it's rejected, then the wise thing to do is just to walk away from the problem and find an alternate solution.

But you could use the Knoppix Live-CD, just put the CD in, power on the computer and keep pressing the C button; for most computers this forces it to boot from CD. F button for Floppy, if you were wondering as well. Although, I wouldn't recommend doing this since the administration could get very angry.

[KenWittlief]

Originally Posted by Athena

... As far as buying cheap latops. I dont know if we even have the funds for that this year. But its not a bad idea. So if anyone has any more ideas please tell us.

Thanks

whats your teams funding situation? If your going to write your own custom code for the Bot (as opposed to using the default code, like many teams do), then you need at least one PC

ask the students, ask the mentors, ask parents, ask your sponsors. Certainly someone must have an old laptop they can donate, or at least loan to the team for a few months.

If nothing else, theres always ebay! :^)

[sanddrag]

Instead of trying to find ways around school policies, why not just get the school on your side. Most school districts install software onto their computers by imaging them anyway. So, tell them to build you regular image (without Novell and all that junk) that you can use for the build season and do whatever you want with it, then after build season when they want their laptop back, they can just reimage it to what it was before. If they are supportive enough to give you laptops, there's no reason they shouldn't be able to make them functional for you.

[527point]

I dont know what experience you have had with your school in the past, specifically with the CIO or whoever is in charge of the technology but you might be surprised. When our team first approached the district about getting some programs installed (or finishing compile and burnign a cd with the animation during the middle of a school vacation) they helped with open arms. I know that my first experience with the techs were they helped in any way possibble. They found what we were doing so interesting that they wanted to get involved. When they found out how knowledgeable a few members were with technology they actually offered us jobs working for the district.

Now they have given us laptops, desktops, a webcam and any software we needed. I have been working for them for 4 years now and youd be surprised they are just as normal (or strange dependign on your view) as us.

[billbo911]

Originally Posted by 527point

They found what we were doing so interesting that they wanted to get involved. When they found out how knowledgeable a few members were with technology .... I have been working for them for 4 years now and youd be surprised they are just as normal (or strange dependign on your view) as us.

Your point is very well presented!

I work in a very large health care organization. In fact, it is the single largest HMO in the country. I work very closely with the IT department although I do not work directly for them.
The IT infrastructure here similar to what NUKEM described in that it is very restrictive. Believe me, there are many VERY GOOD reasons that it is this way. The interesting thing is, there are basically two groups of people that don't like it: The technically inept that feel they are being restricted by those in power, and, the technically adept that know what their needs are and can fully explain it.

I'll give you one guess as to which of these groups actually end up getting the access and applications they need. All it takes is explaining your needs and justifying your request. In fact, as 527point said, he found that they were so impressed with the teams knowledge and understanding of the technical side of their request that the IT wonks actually went out of their way to help out. It is my experience as well that most IT people love to have, and help out, users that truly understand what they are doing.

[Rickertsen2]

Originally Posted by Athena

Well I go to the same school as nukem. We do not have access to the BIOS. So a boot disk wont work without other methods.
Thanks

This is the kind of thing that my team would not tolerate. It seems to me a total waste of $$ to buy each student laptops with such restrictions. If they lock you our of the bios and it is only configured to boot off the HD then pop out the HD and pop in into another computer and modify whatever you want. I would wipe it and install *nix or a fresh windows install. Or you could do dual boot if you need all the school stuff. You can buy a 40-44pin IDE adapter that will allow you to put a 2.5" laptop drive in a desktop computer. If you want to unlock the bios, many bioses have backdoor passwords. If yours doesn't laptops occasionally have a pins you can short or a jumper to clear the bios but not usually. If all else fails, build yourself an EEPROM programmer and find the appropriate image.

We had some similar probs in my computer science class. We went to the county IT dept and they said they had no problem making any changes. Well, time passed and no changes were ever made. We took matters into our own hands and "obtained" the Novel, and DeepFreeze passwords and made the appropriate changes.

Now depending on the level of incompetence in your county, this probably isn't the best approach.

They might not like it but if i were you, i would either buy my own hardrive and swap it out when needed or set up dual boot.

[dlavery]

This is the kind of thing that my team would not tolerate. It seems to me a total waste of $$ to buy each student laptops with such restrictions. If they lock you our of the bios and it is only configured to boot off the HD then pop out the HD and pop in into another computer and modify whatever you want. I would wipe it and install *nix or a fresh windows install. Or you could do dual boot if you need all the school stuff. You can buy a 40-44pin IDE adapter that will allow you to put a 2.5" laptop drive in a desktop computer. If you want to unlock the bios, many bioses have backdoor passwords. If yours doesn't laptops occasionally have a pins you can short or a jumper to clear the bios but not usually. If all else fails, build yourself an EEPROM programmer and find the appropriate image.

We had some similar probs in my computer science class. We went to the county IT dept and they said they had no problem making any changes. Well, time passed and no changes were ever made. We took matters into our own hands and "obtained" the Novel, and DeepFreeze passwords and made the appropriate changes.

Now depending on the level of incompetence in your county, this probably isn't the best approach.

They might not like it but if i were you, i would either buy my own hardrive and swap it out when needed or set up dual boot.

Wow. This is possibly one of the most inappropriate and ill-conceived pieces of advice I have seen on these forums in quite a while. Let's just check through what is being advocated here:
- The county has been generous enough to provide each student with a laptop computer. In response, it is suggested that you abuse the implicit trust that has been granted, and try to break their systems.
- The computers belong to the county, and are not the personal property of the students. The response? Recommend that the students remove the hard drives (not their property) and use them - illegally - in alternate computers.
- Against the obvious design and use requirements implemented by the computer owners, we find the recommendation to purge the operating system and install a new one that is in conflict with the installed configuration.
- Illegally obtain a backdoor password and use it to defeat the legitimately installed software system.
- If all else fails, permanently overwrite the original configuration, rendering it unable to be utilized as intended by the system owner. But that's OK, because now you can use a computer that is not yours for a purpose for which the owner has not granted permission, for an activity that is acknowledged to be something that "they might not like."

Normally, I might let something like this pass, or limit it to a background discussion. However, when such a blatant and irresponsible post is made, it cannot be left alone. What is being advocated here is a violation of trust, an abuse of privilege, a disreputable behavior, and a borderline criminal activity. It is just plain wrong. To let this go unchallenged - in a forum in which we all profess to support professional and responsible behaviors - would be wrong.

The original question asked for constructive suggestions for dealing with what were felt to be onerous limitations on the use of provided resources. It is reasonable for us to expect that a community like this could come up with a set of reasonable options for "working within the system" to get the situation corrected (e.g. the suggestions from Sanddrag and 527Point). If such solutions cannot be articulated, then it might be reasonable to identify alternate resources to achieve the real end goal (access to an appropriate programming environment for robot code development). It is likewise reasonable to expect that all of these responses can and should be made with full consideration of the property and ownership rights of the suppliers of the computer. To see a reponse to this query that is so contrary to the values and principles of this community is disturbing.

As an analogy, when a corporation provides funding and/or support for a team, it is incumbent upon the team to utilize those resources in a manner consistent with the constraints under which they were provided. If a sponsor provides several thousand dollars to fund a team, but states that the team can only use the funds to pay registration fees and procure materials, the team does NOT have the right to say "screw that, we are using this money to pay travel expenses so we can all go to the cool regional competition in Anchorage." If they did that, the sponsor would be entirely within their rights to demand a complete refund of all the provided funding, and urge that such an irresponsible team be terminated immediately.

What is being advocated above is no less egregious a violation of trust than the analogous example. If the provided advice is followed, the county would be perfectly justified in shutting down the team and punishing the perpetrators appropriately.

My purpose here is NOT to flame the author of this suggestion. Rather, I believe that this should be used as an example from which to learn. We all need to understand what professional behavior is all about. Occasionally, that also means that we have to understand when we have crossed over the line. This is just such an example. We need to expect better behavior from ourselves if this community is going to survive and thrive. And when we do cross over the line, we need to bring ourselves up short and correct the situation.

-dave