Re: Grub Scripting

[Chris Umphress]

On Fri, May 8, 2009 at 3:44 PM, Colin D Bennett <address@hidden> wrote:
> Chris Umphress wrote on Friday 08 May 2009:
>> We'll overwrite the boot loader and restore the partition table if it
>> was destroyed. That would be handled from a custom, bootable live-CD
>> or thumbdrive. This is going to be used on laptops that are lent out
>> and it is one more way that we can try to force people to return them
>> without sending the police out. This is why we need it automated.
>
> It seems like just disabling the GRUB boot menu entries would be a better
> method than actually wiping the MBR/partition table/etc.  A somewhat robust
> way (so that it's not trivial for a user to set back the BIOS date after the
> system has locked them out) would be to set a flag in the GRUB boot partition
> that indicates the system is to be locked down.  Then whenever that flag is
> set, instead of using the normal boot setup, your GRUB script displays a
> message to the user like "Your usage period of this computer has expired.
> Please return it to [your org. here]."

That would be a simpler solution. By destroying the partition table we
are ensuring that a Windows XP CD with the "fixmbr" command won't
return the system to working order. A lot of kids are clever enough to
pull that off.

It is a slippery slope for how much is too much work for the actual results.

-- 
Chris Umphress <http://www.epicvoyage.org>