Global groups

💡 Tip: If using LTSP, see also ltsp.conf groups.

Suppose that a school has 5 computer labs and 50 teachers. It would be tiresome if each teacher had to manually create Epoptes groups for these labs. The following solution is provided:

1. Login as the school “administrator” (it can be one of the teachers) and run Epoptes at least once so that the ~/.config/epoptes/groups.json file gets created.
2. Then close Epoptes and execute the following command:

   sudo mv ~/.config/epoptes/groups.json /etc/epoptes/
   

   Make sure to use mv instead of cp, otherwise Epoptes won’t have write access to /etc/epoptes/groups.json. Or at least use cp -a.

3. From now on, all Epoptes instances will be using /etc/epoptes/groups.json instead of per-user configuration files. That means that any Epoptes group that the administrator creates, will be visible to the other teachers the next time that they run Epoptes.
4. The other teachers will be able to create or delete groups, but their changes will be lost the next time they run Epoptes.

An additional feature was also implemented: the ability to hide some Epoptes clients, for example staff PCs, from everyone except the administrator. To do this, the administrator just needs to create a group named “X-Hidden” and to drag the clients he wants in it. The teachers won’t be seeing those clients anymore, nor the “X-Hidden” group. Multiple hidden groups are also supported, as long as their names start with “X-Hidden”.