Internet kiosks on gentoo

khel · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 07 Mar 2003 Posts: 80

Does anybody have experience setting up internet kiosks based on gentoo (or any other ..nix )? Any tips and links to the info to read would be really appriciated

Thanks

khel
_________________
If it's stupid but works, it isn't stupid.
Using Gentoo? Help the others!

flickerfly · l33t Joined: 08 Nov 2002 Posts: 677 Location: Lanham, MD

I think the Opera web browser has a kiosk mode so you could simply run that and lock the user out of eveyrthing else. I haven't used it myself so can't vouch for how sold it is. Other browsers might have such features. I think KDE has focused on that some so perhaps Konquerer has it.
_________________
An Evil Genious' Guide to Sheeple and How To Avoid Becoming One | 0x4C9EF4A

khel · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 07 Mar 2003 Posts: 80

Thanks, will check it out. I wonder if it would be possible to set it up in a "terminal server"---->"thin clients" way.

khel
_________________
If it's stupid but works, it isn't stupid.
Using Gentoo? Help the others!

flickerfly · l33t Joined: 08 Nov 2002 Posts: 677 Location: Lanham, MD

Absolutely! There is an LTSP tutorial in the docs here on Gentoo that would get you started with the terminals. I've done it before (actually helped with the docs) but don't use it on a regular basis as I didn't have the buy-in to use it for the lab I wanted it for. That really is a great way to operate a stack of users with minimal admin/financial overhead.
_________________
An Evil Genious' Guide to Sheeple and How To Avoid Becoming One | 0x4C9EF4A

flickerfly · l33t Joined: 08 Nov 2002 Posts: 677 Location: Lanham, MD

Another idea, you could run ratpoisin for the window manager and have it autoload a browser, then have a script in cron to check every minute is the browser is open and if not open it again. ratpoisin is a very minimal wm.
_________________
An Evil Genious' Guide to Sheeple and How To Avoid Becoming One | 0x4C9EF4A

khel · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 07 Mar 2003 Posts: 80

Thanks a lot flickerfly!
It looks like i'll have a lot of reading and experimenting to do in the next couple of weeks

khel
_________________
If it's stupid but works, it isn't stupid.
Using Gentoo? Help the others!

flickerfly · l33t Joined: 08 Nov 2002 Posts: 677 Location: Lanham, MD

khel · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 07 Mar 2003 Posts: 80

After some reading I'm back with some questions

1. How dependant is it on Xinetd? Cause at the moment, I'm running my system without it and was going to keep it this way. As far as I understand, it shouln't be a problem, but just want to make sure before trying it in "real life"

2. I'm already running dhcp server (linksys router/switch) so the solution (as I see it) would be to run another dhcpd for ltsp on different ports for ex. 1001,1002 and somehow setup different range of supplied IPs from linksys. Is it the only way or is there a better solution??

3. Is anybody working on version 4.0 ebuild? It looks much better than 3.x versions.

Thanks

khel
_________________
If it's stupid but works, it isn't stupid.
Using Gentoo? Help the others!

flickerfly · l33t Joined: 08 Nov 2002 Posts: 677 Location: Lanham, MD

1: I'm not sure how dependant Xinetd is. I suggest checking with the LTSP-users email list.

2: There are a couple options. LTSP can be setup to use an external DHCP server. I prefer to have LTSP setup on a dual-NIC machine. One NIC provides LTSP dedicated network and the other provides access to the pre-existing network, presumably including Internet access.

3: I don't know, but would like to be informed if someone is. I suggest checking around the portage tree in the LTSP files for a name and email address of the previous writer. He might be working on it, but I haven't kept contact with him.
_________________
An Evil Genious' Guide to Sheeple and How To Avoid Becoming One | 0x4C9EF4A

meyerm · Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2004 1:54 pm Post subject:

Just for completeness: KDE offers the so called "KIOSK mode". I think in KDE 3.2 it will even have a gui for configuration (even if not there is a lot of documentation in the net).

khel · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 07 Mar 2003 Posts: 80

Thanks to all that helped, first step of my project is done - ltsp is installed and running!!!

Posting from my test "thin" client

The most difficult part for me was to find out what chipset my network card was using. Spent A LOT of time.... and as it usually goes, all I had to do was to run "lspci -n" and voila

Now, the tricky part. What is the best way to make the actual kiosk with autologin and firebird as the only option. Hmmm..... Off to some more reading.

p.s. I hope it's possible to do it without KDE's kiosk mode as I don't want to run more applications than needed.

khel
_________________
If it's stupid but works, it isn't stupid.
Using Gentoo? Help the others!

compuboy86 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 03 Apr 2003 Posts: 79

I can't help in terms of specifics but I think the best way to implent a kiosk type deal would to have a user that can _only_ open firebird/etc. I've personally seen kiosks that have bombed out of their "kiosk program" and then gives the user more or less complete access to the underlying system. Depending on the location, this may not be a huge problem but its something to think about.

Better yet, now that I think about it, you could create a group "kiosk" for that use instead of messing with a particular user.

khel · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 07 Mar 2003 Posts: 80

compuboy86 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 03 Apr 2003 Posts: 79

Well to answer one of the problems, you can launch firebird fairly easily when X starts. Just modify /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc to include something like (no quotes) exec firebird.

khel · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 07 Mar 2003 Posts: 80

flickerfly · l33t Joined: 08 Nov 2002 Posts: 677 Location: Lanham, MD

Great on the idea of posting all the steps. I believe that to disable various keystrokes you'll want to mess with /etc/X11/XF86Config.

Sounds like you are making great progress quickly. :-)

_________________
An Evil Genious' Guide to Sheeple and How To Avoid Becoming One | 0x4C9EF4A

compuboy86 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 03 Apr 2003 Posts: 79

Sorry for being vague but its late. I know specifically that there is a way to manipulate the keys on the keyboard from a howto on how to use the ~windows key on the standard 1-4-key keyboard. Also, for the life of me I cannot remember where this is but it stuck with me because I thought it was funny (hopefully it'll jog other people's memories) There is a comment in a config file somewhere that says "What to do with a three-finger-salute" (ctrl-alt-delete). You might want to investigate that and comment it out/etc so you can't have the user rebooting the system.

compuboy86 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 03 Apr 2003 Posts: 79

Let us know what the progress is! I found what I mentioned in the above post. You can find/map what to do with keys in /etc/inittab- In case you're interested =p

NiXZe · Posted: Thu Mar 18, 2004 6:53 pm Post subject:

khel how did it go with loocking mozilla down... i'm kind of working on the same stuff and have tried first mozilla 1.6 (geting it maximized without vm is not possible) i started looking at galeon however i'm no hacker when it comes down to changing many src files, Makefiles etc so it was pretty much a give up... then i found epiphany which was a bit smaler in dl size so i thught lets give it a try however it doesnt seem to go to fullscreen mode without wm eighter. so now i'm gona try kde in kios mode and see how it performs and then lets check out mozillafirebird and se what can be done... also going to try ratpoison

however i want to hear anything that can make a compleatly looked down box... and also if anyone has a gecko based web client that runs maximized without any statusbar or address bar or anything (going to be used as a presentation box, using javascript to change page every 30sec or somthing like it.)
_________________
What? Where? Oh! this one, it's Gentoo.
If you don't have anything constructive to say, you might want to consider staying quiet instead.
To many destructive comments, which in no way will help making the Gentoo community better.