Alice 2.2 on a network

Hi. I'm getting ready to teach alice 2.2 and have loaded it on my students' computers. When logged on as administrator, the gallery opens, but not if logged on as a student. I have read the info on the alice website about running it on networked machines. It instructs you to edit a text file to add a path where the user preferences are to be stored. Here's the instructions from the Alice.org website:

We have modified Alice 2.2 to allow the user to enter in the path to a writable directory on any drive, networked or local. This can be done by opening up the following file in a text editor:

Alice 2.2\Required\etc\version.txt
It should look like this:

2.2 9/1/2008
0x7F8AD1
Add a new line at the bottom and enter in the *full* path to where you would like the preferences stored. This will need to be a writable directory. Do not use quotes. For example, if I wanted to change the location to my desktop on drive E, I would do the following:
2.2 9/1/2008
0x7F8AD1
E:\Documents and Settings\jtimberlake\Desktop\.alice2

Save the file and close it. If Alice is running, make sure to shut it down and restart. To confirm it is working, navigate to the directory you typed above and you should see a .alice2 directory. If you do not see one, make sure hidden directories are viewable.

My question is, do I need to do that at every machine where it's installed, and how do I do that for different users who use the computer? The students work off of the H drive but obviously the file path for their individual folders will be different. Help please!
Mary

Originally Posted by Maryb

My question is, do I need to do that at every machine where it's installed, and how do I do that for different users who use the computer? The students work off of the H drive but obviously the file path for their individual folders will be different. Help please!
Mary

The change needs to be made wherever your Alice is installed. When our IT guys were pushing the Alice update, I sent them the .zip file with version.txt manually replaced.

As for the path, my students have a network drive that maps directly to their own folder on the file server, so we directed version.txt to it (Z:\). I haven't checked to see if version.txt respects environment variables (I'm guessing no), but that'd probably be the best solution.

Thank you...it looks like that is working.
maryb

[David B]

This may sound stupid, but if you know the student's passwords, just log in under their name, and install it.