Booting Linux from an internal IDE Zip disk?

Brad Cox brad at linuxbofh.com
Wed Dec 19 15:57:46 PST 2001


On Wed, Dec 19, 2001 at 02:06:14PM -0800, Richard Gordon wrote:
> In the computer labs at SSU there is a need to allow students to be
> root under Linux and to have a copy of Linux that they can configure
> and run on any computer in the lab. For this we want them to have
> Linux on a Zip disk.

You may as well give them root on the box in question, as once they
boot their own copy, gaining root on the real box is trivial.  You
should consider using VMWare (an x86 emulator, www.vmware.com).  It
will let them run Linux (or other x86 OS's) from within Linux, but on
the real system they remain themselves, so no security issues.

VMWare can present files on the disk to the OS it is running as if
they were hard drives, so their root partition could be on the zip
disk and /usr could be off the network (you should not let them
access the real one).  It has a feature that would enable them to work
with a disk, but without making any changes to the actual filesystem.
They can explore, break things, etc.  When they shut down vmware,
everything is back where it should be.

-- 
Brad Cox		brad at linuxbofh.com
Key fingerprint = E741 589E 4A43 DA89 C5AA  B9A3 7E44 18BB C16B F62D
"Nuclear war can ruin your whole compile."
-- Karl Lehenbauer



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