Meilix System Lock

Meilix-Systemlock has to two main shell files: lock.sh and unlock.sh. The purpose of the script is that if the lock.sh is called, the content inside the home directory will be reset after rebooting of the system. And it will be in that state of getting back reset to home directory until unlock.sh is being called.

An Example to illustrate

Suppose in a computer lab, the students are given computers and they make changes which don’t seem convenient to the maintainer of the lab. The maintainer freezes the system to have a clean state, and the students use the computer and make it “dirty”, and the reboot restores to the clean state when maintainer running freeze. As soon as the lock.sh is being called system will copy the files in the home directory to another place, then reboot. Reboot and copying don’t occur parallelly.

The system remains in the frozen state and every time when its get rebooted, it gets to the same state of home directory when it is being frozen. This can be stopped by calling unlock.sh. This can be helpful for the maintainer for creating a new freeze point.
I get the idea through chat with Yeo Wei and used the logo from here.

Diagram for clear representation

How does it solve someone’s problem in daily life?

As I explained in the example, it can easily solve the problem of a computer lab assistant at a school, college, public cafe, etc. I request this idea should reach to them, and they can run the lock.sh to freeze the system so as to avoid the dirtiness made by a third person. Maintainer generally left out this dirt for next user who is going to work on the same PC. But this technique will make the PC new and new user doesn’t have to clean the dirt made by the previous user and they can setup their environment freshly.

Understanding the Important Code Mechanism:

In the lock.sh script

Line: 44

echo “sudo rsync -a –delete /etc/.ofris/$ofris_user/ /home/$ofris_user/” >> ofris_tmp

– this line restore the files stored in /etc/.ofris/user to /home/user” into /etc/rc.local (which runs every time computer boots).

Line: 38, 39

if [ $ofris_rst = 1 ]; then 
echo "Error: The system has been locked, please select the fourth choice to unfreeze the system..."

– this line stops the execution of lock.sh if it hasn’t been unlocked yet.

In the unlock.sh script

Line: 1

grep -v "sudo rsync -a --delete /etc/" /etc/rc.local > ofris_tmp_b

– this check if the rc.local is being modified or not.
And rest command removes the created folder and restore the home folder to its original state.

The important repository containing:
https://github.com/fossasia/meilix-systemlock

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