on reboot revert back to original state

Question

I need to setup an environment that when the machine or VM is rebooted that it will automatically go back to the original image, removing any changes, profiles or applications that have been applied while the user was logged into the machine. I would prefer to do this virtually but am open to bare metal suggestions. Any information you can provide will be most helpful, thanks!

Answer 1

I am sure AWS and other providers have means to automatically restore from image before rebooting. I'd do it manually.

You can also do it in startup scripts e.g. /etc/profile or lower-level ones executed upon Linux startup. Stopped working with Windows long time ago, so not sure if it still has the good old autoexec.bat. In this case you need to know what to remove (or add), so I'd limit what your users can do. Tell us what you are trying to wipe. It should be something specific. Restrict users from doing anything else.