Key Concepts

Participant vs trainer role

• Participants are the primary trainees. They can request help, arrange panes and chat with trainers. They cannot see or connect to other participants.
• Trainers have elevated privileges, assistance features and different views. For example, they see when participants request help and can connect to their terminals. Assign a trainer role to all teachers and assistants.

The Agent

The agent is the main process managing a training session, initiated via shellroom start. Each user (participant or trainer) runs a separate shellroom process, and the Agent process brings all together into one training session. It connects to the web terminals and spawns a child process when a new user opens a web terminal.

Standard vs non-standard setup

The standard setup is an opionated way to run shellroom, leveraging Linux’ system user and login for authentication and web-terminal for access.

Non-standard ways to run:

1. Virtual login mode - no separate system users are created. Instead, all users will run under the same system account as the one that started the agent. When users access the browser link, a login form is displayed. For authentication, the agent matches username/password against the provided users csv file. Then, a normal login shell is opened. Invoke with shellroom start --login virtual
2. SSH use - users log in via SSH. You manage the user authentication. You can disable the file server.
3. Roll-your-own setup - just make sure to start the agent with shellroom start and that users can join the session with shellroom join.