magnesiumlinux / quoits

the QUOITS Unix-Operated Inteactive Teletype System

What is QUOITS?

QUOITS is the QUOITS Unix-Operated Interactive Teletype System. It is a (aspirationally) secure, text-based time-division-multiple-access multiuser operating system. It's built on top of magnesium linux and the crater packaging system.

Getting Started

Networking

For wired networks running a DHCP server, running

> net up eth0

will connect to the network. On wireless networks, you can give the AP and PSK by hand:

> net wifi wlan0 "HomeNetwork" "SecritPa$$wurd"

> net up wlan0

or use the interactive chooser:

> net wifi wlan0 up

you can see the available interfaces with:

> net ls

and check their status with:

> net stat eth0

Timezone

QUOITS boots up using UTC time by default. Use the interactive timezone chooser to change the timezone:

> tz

or if you know your timezone string:

> tz US/Pacific

User Accounts

All user accounts in QUOITS are ephemeral. That is, they don't exist until you create them, and they go away when the system restarts. Also, user files are only stored in memory unless explicitly saved. To create a user account named bob:

> user up bob

to open a new shell as the user bob:

> user shell bob

This will switch the console to a virtual terminal running the shell. After working in bob's account for a while, get back to QUOITS by typing ALT+F1, and save bob's home directory in a pod named 'bobfiles':

> user save bob bobfiles

to destroy bob's account:

> user down bob

You can re-create the 'bob' account and files with:

> user up bob

> user load bob bobfiles

> user shell bob

Bigboard

Bigboard shows many useful statistics about the running system all on a single page. To open bigboard:

> bigboard

or just:

> bb

Type 'q' to exit bigboard and get back to the QUOITS shell

Builder

If you want to modify QUOITS or the magnesium environment that it runs on top of, you'll want access to the builder console (root access).
These are available on VT9 by default. This is insecure in a multi- user environment and should be shut down before sharing the computer run:

# sv x l0gin

# clear; exit

from the builder console to shutdown the builder console

Not Working Yet (aka TODO)

Saved user directories (pods) are still unencrypted. This makes QUOITS unsuitable for sharing with untrusted people, as they can just go around the built-in protections (because you left the l0gin service running, or just by accessing the backing file store offline) and mess with/view your files. Support for loopback-encrypted pods is supported through the kernel and loop-AES, and we have symmetric and PK file encryption available with the 'spor' tool: the glue code just hasn't been written yet.

File backup is still not automated and relies on access to the l0gin service