Basic admin tools for non-expert users

[bredman]

I was thinking about the list of admin tools which will be needed. Let us assume that the Raspi must be administered by an unskilled instructor or by a self-sufficient loner. As I see it, the following will be needed...

Initial build of SD card, using a PC

Backup system volume

Rebuild system volume, using a PC

Rebuild system volume, using another Rpi (probably difficult)

Rebuild system volume, using same Rpi (probably very difficult)

Backup user volume

Rebuild user volume, using a PC

Rebuild user volume, using another Rpi (probably difficult)

Rebuild user volume, using same Rpi (probably difficult)

When using a PC, we cannot make any assumptions about the PC operating system, so we may need a custom boot CD.

I also assume that there will be separate volumes for system and user.

The user interface has to be dirt simple, impossible to break, and multilingual.

Does anybody know what might be suitable as a starting point?

Can we assume that the user will have access to a PC and an SD card reader? Remember that most smartphones can be used as an SD card reader.

Can we assume that the user will have access to USB-connected storage? A smartphone can be used for example. This would make some of the rebuild scenarios much easier.

[Jaseman]

Someone ought to set up a business, selling SD cards with pre-loaded distro's in all flavours - Independant of the Foundation.

This person should also provide a service, where you can send your screwed up SD card to them, and they will fix the distro for you, so it works again.

I don't think you will have any trouble finding tutorials and videos on how to administer your machine.

I might set up this business myself - how hard can it be?

I ain't doing it for free though!

[Eclipse]

Interesting thoughts on SD card management. Until now I had been thinking that a customised version of UNetbootin that could be pointed at a list of Raspberry Pi-specific distros would be the easiest way for users to roll their own SD cards.

But the idea of handling everything on the Raspberry Pi itself from the get-go is rather neat; it wouldn't surprise me if this has been discussed elsewhere, but I get lost trying to navigate around the forum these days.

Imagine though an SD card with a tiny recovery volume that featured something similar to UNetbootin. The remaining space on the card could be divided into a system volume and a user volume, as bredman said. Upon first using the card, the user would be prompted to pick a distro from a list; this list could be fetched from a community-managed server so that the available distro list is always current. The recovery manager would then perform a network install of the chosen distro to the system volume. Reboot and away you go.

If the user ever wanted to change their distro, they could boot into the recovery manager once again and select another. This would then overwrite the system volume but would leave the user volume containing home directories untouched. Some work would probably be needed to make sure that none of the distros made available using the recovery manager were able to overwrite the recovery volume or the user volume during installation.

Of course, you would still need some way of getting the SD card with the recovery volume on it to users, but it would be the only card anyone (with Internet access) would ever need.

[dukla2000]

bredman said:

Does anybody know what might be suitable as a starting point?
Methinks much of what you are looking for is already cooking:

http://www.raspberrypi.org/for.....ation-tool

As soon as Liam is done with his exams I expect that thread to kick back into life.