Shared Workstation Image

To address boot-speed issues associated with older hardware, Luke Faraone and I have designed what we call the "shared workstation image" or SWI for short.

The intended result is a continuously-running system which, upon the insertion of a flash drive, links /home and /etc/passwd to the /home and /etc/passwd contained in the persistence file. This will allow a user to log into the system and have access to all their user-specific configuration files and documents in a near seamless fashion.

I have not yet been able to test the system we designed, as I've been preoccupied with boot speed. As a result, I'd sincerely appreciate technical assistance with this project. With this in mind, here's what we have


as the contents of /usr/local/bin/fastswap...

mountPoint=$(mount | grep $0 | awk '{print $3}')

if [ -a $mountPoint/casper-rw]; then

    mount -o loop $mountPoint/casper-rw /mnt

    mount --bind /mnt/home /home

    mount --bind /mnt/etc/passwd /etc/passwd

else

    echo "Already mounted"

fi

contents of /etc/udev/rules.d/fastswap.rules

ACTION=="add",KERNEL=="sdb*", RUN+="/usr/local/bin/fastswap %k"

ACTION=="remove", KERNEL=="sdb*", RUN+="killall gdm-session-worker"

contents of /etc/gdm/PostSession/Default

#!/bin/sh

umount /etc/passwd

umount /home

umount /mnt

DISPLAY=:0.0  zenity --info --timeout=10 \

          --text="Your removable storage device can now be safely removed from the system."

# TODO: use the device name in the message above

exit 0