| Stella Public Web Kiosk [message #512] |
Fri, 19 October 2012 10:27  |
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D8TA
Messages: 33
Registered: October 2012
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I am coming from openSUSE where I used SUSE Studio to build a custom install of openSUSE where only the necessary packages are installed. In this case the kernel, Gnome Desktop, Printing, and Web Browser (Firefox). I believe that is all I have installed. I wanted a very slim OS to place on 15 PCs that I have for general web surfing.
Once I built the image up and had everything customized, locked down desktop so users could not change anything I used Symantec Ghost to ghost the HDD. Using ext3 Ghost works. I don't need LVM and just created a boot, swap, and / partition for these systems. Users are unable to save anything to the local drives. Once the image is dropped down on a new PC openSUSE has the ability to customize the first-boot which I then setup the time, networking, root password and all that good stuff. I also have a package called patch to email which is a cron job that checks the openSUSE update repos for updates and sends me an email regarding what updates are available. This is setup to run weekly in cron.
I discovered Stella and have been running it on my notebook for about 2 months now and want to try and replace my openSUSE Kiosk PCs with this distro. Is there a similiar way for me to do all this with Stella? Slimmed down with just the necessary applications, the ability to print and surf web pages? If I use ext3 partitions I know Ghost will work but couldn't find anything regarding customizing the first boot. Or is there a better method to accomplish what I am wanting to do with this locked down, single user, kiosk web browsing PC?
I believe that sums up what I am looking to do. I really love that everything I have tried to play or do with Stella just worked! Great distro and keep up the good work and most importantly...Thanks!
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| Re: Stella Public Web Kiosk [message #515 is a reply to message #512] |
Fri, 19 October 2012 15:23  |
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Hello,
What you say can be done, but it would require a bit of work. If you're willing to wait I might have some time next week to assist you with this.
In the meanwhile, I wholeheartedly recommend you to check out a proper kiosk distro: http://webconverger.com/
It may well be the answer to all your questions.
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| Re: Stella Public Web Kiosk [message #531 is a reply to message #512] |
Wed, 24 October 2012 17:04 |
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Hi,
Regarding security and retaining user data, would you say keeping /tmp and /home/guestuser as tmpfs (i.e. gets cleaned after each reboot) would be something useful?
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| Re: Stella Public Web Kiosk [message #551 is a reply to message #512] |
Fri, 26 October 2012 11:12 |
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D8TA,
I've played a bit with xguest and it's pretty sweet! I can generate you a custom Stella LiveCD image with xguest enabled or even an image that you can simply "dd" on to the PC's disk.
Let me know if you would like software added or removed (otherwise it's stock Stella packages, some may be useful, some not).
For additional security I can include http://elrepo.org/tiki/kmod-tpe , a really nice piece of software!
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| Re: Stella Public Web Kiosk [message #557 is a reply to message #512] |
Fri, 26 October 2012 16:56 |
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Nah, it should be fine.
Also, tell your admin that I could provide a raw image file with Stella, maybe it can be used with your existing Norton Ghost.
Let me know what he says.
Also, what arch are you using? Should I bother with 32bit or just go with x86_64?
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| Re: Stella Public Web Kiosk [message #564 is a reply to message #512] |
Sat, 27 October 2012 06:30 |
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There is no password for the xguest (aka Guest) user. Merely clicking on it in GDM will log you in.
I did notice a bug where when you use "Switch user" as xguest in Gnome GDM won't let you back in. However if you do logout you can log back in without problems.
I'll try to raise a ticket with RedHat, see how we can fix the "switch user" problems.
Any more other problems you'd like to report?
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| Re: Stella Public Web Kiosk [message #572 is a reply to message #512] |
Sat, 27 October 2012 14:51 |
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Hm, this is weird. I'm yet to encounter this problem.
Try to execute this in a console, as root:
cat >> /etc/gdm/custom.conf << FOE
[daemon]
TimedLoginEnable=true
TimedLogin=xguest
TimedLoginDelay=5
FOE
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| Re: Stella Public Web Kiosk [message #577 is a reply to message #512] |
Sat, 27 October 2012 21:03 |
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Wow, any chance you can take a picture/screenshot of that GDM problem? You're hitting problems unknown to me.
Regarding the removal of Gnome panels and such, why bother? Better go with a minimalistic window manager instead.
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| Re: Stella Public Web Kiosk [message #593 is a reply to message #512] |
Thu, 01 November 2012 21:37 |
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Hi,
Been busy, too (RedHat dev day, yey!), I'll get back to this issue in the weekend. It would help if you could state your current situation: what works, what doesn't and what requirements are still to be satisfied.
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| Re: Stella Public Web Kiosk [message #622 is a reply to message #512] |
Tue, 06 November 2012 13:12 |
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Well, the beauty of this implementation is all their changes will be removed once they logout, so why not let them mess around? 
Let me look through gconf for the panel issue.
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| Re: Stella Public Web Kiosk [message #623 is a reply to message #512] |
Tue, 06 November 2012 13:20 |
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Ok, found it, run this as root:
gconftool-2 --direct --config-source=xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults -s -t "string" /apps/panel/toplevels/top_panel/orientation "bottom"
Then try to login as xguest. Both panels should be at the bottom.
[Updated on: Tue, 06 November 2012 13:22] Report message to a moderator |
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| Re: Stella Public Web Kiosk [message #625 is a reply to message #512] |
Tue, 06 November 2012 13:31 |
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D8TA,
Regarding system updates and notifications, you can install yum-cron and then adjust /etc/sysconfig/yum-cron to your liking.
Additionally you could subscribe to the centos-announce mailing list to be notified of updates:
"13:28 <@z00dax> the announce list gets the emails on a per package basis, but you can also subscribe to the digest version" said the Centos lead dev.
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Nux!
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I installed to the drive and everything looked alright until I rebooted. Then gdm didn't start but wasn't sure if that was my video card or not. I could login as root and then run gdm but didn't know how to login to guest user as it asked about a security configuration and the default was [N].
