OS for computer illiterate?

[Gordon Burditt]

>Just make sure you have an uninterruptable power supply (UPS) attached
>to the machine and you'll be fine.  It is unlikely that a naive
>user will inadvertantly crash the machine.

This, unfortunately isn't true.  If naive users have access to the console,
you probably need to replace the reset switch with a key-operated switch.
Keep the key where it takes at least 30 seconds to reach it.  Users used
to MS-DOS tend to use RESET often, and it's usually inappropriate on a
multi-user machine.  I've seen this problem happen even on machines that
won't run MS-DOS.  We couldn't keep these people out of the machine room
because they had legitimate reason to use other machines in the room, and
in most cases they could use the machine that got reset.  They weren't 
being malicious nor are they stupid - they just didn't know.

A naive system administrator can probably function fairly well with
two specialized logins (using the root uid, 0) for shutdown and backup.  
Use a shell script as the shell specified in the password file for each 
login, and have logging in activate a shutdown or making a backup.  It 
might be reasonable to give out the password to the shutdown login to 
most users (or even non-users!) with physical access to the console, so 
when you get notified that the power is going off in 10 minutes, or at
the end of the day if you don't want the system running overnight, someone 
there can shut down the system in an orderly manner.

					Gordon L. Burditt
					sneaky.lonestar.org!gordon