Kiosk Mode

[woodsman]

I notice you folks have a Live CD beta available. I hope to download tonight or this weekend. In the mean time . . . .

I'm thinking about converting a 350 MHz PII box (448 MB RAM) into a web browser for the guest room. Nothing more and nothing less. Just a web browser.

That kind of relates to kiosk mode and I'm researching more about that topic. Salix might be a candidate. However, all I need is a basic window manager and a web browser so I am unsure.

There are security concerns I need to address. Yet one way or another I want the system to auto-login.

Many Live CDs auto-login with a guest account but they do so through a login manager in run level 4. I'm guessing your Live CD boots into run level 4. Please correct me if I'm guessing wrong. Although perhaps the easy way out for auto-login, run level 4 seems unecessary for a kiosk type machine.

Do you folks know how to auto-login in run level 3?

And perhaps share a tad more about your Live CD? Beta means known bugs . . . .

Thanks.

[Shador]

You just define your own runlevel (like 5) and let it launch your own runlevel.
This is what I use with openbox:

Code: Select all

x:5:respawn:/bin/su shador -l -c "/bin/bash --login -c 'cd; startx' >/dev/null 2>&1"

It's bascially taken from stillborn.

[woodsman]

Thanks for the reply.

I don't know what or who stillborn is.

I modified the text a bit because I did not want a true kiosk mode that would respawn the session when trying to exit. I wanted the account logged out so I can automate a shutdown:

x:3:wait:/bin/su kiosk -l -c "/bin/bash --login -c 'cd $HOME; source .bash_profile' >/dev/null 2>&1"

When the auto-login occurs the text from .bash_profile appears on screen rather than disappearing into the bit bucket. Can't figure that out.

I'm trying to configure .bash_profile such that when the user exits X the script performs an automatic logout and shutdown. I have the logout done but I think I have to add the user to the power group to perform the shutdown automatically.

[Akuna]

Most known bugs from the beta version will be found on this thread http://www.salixos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=355

A new LiveCD version should be ready in a few days, you may want to wait for it.

[woodsman]

A new LiveCD version should be ready in a few days, you may want to wait for it.

Okeydokey!

[Shador]

Thanks for the reply.

I don't know what or who stillborn is.

I modified the text a bit because I did not want a true kiosk mode that would respawn the session when trying to exit. I wanted the account logged out so I can automate a shutdown:

x:3:wait:/bin/su kiosk -l -c "/bin/bash --login -c 'cd $HOME; source .bash_profile' >/dev/null 2>&1"

When the auto-login occurs the text from .bash_profile appears on screen rather than disappearing into the bit bucket. Can't figure that out.

I'm trying to configure .bash_profile such that when the user exits X the script performs an automatic logout and shutdown. I have the logout done but I think I have to add the user to the power group to perform the shutdown automatically.

I don't think overwriting runlevel 3 is a good idea, use the unused 5 instead as I did and change initdefault to 5.

I don't see how you would want to shutdown the computer on X exit, if you don't even launch it (that's what startx, xinit or similar are supposed to do). I also don't think that .bash_profile is intended for any of this. Write your own wrapper for startx. Put it in /usr/local/bin so the users can't modify it.
To shutdown the computer as normal user, I just added 'shutdown -h now' to /etc/sudoers. If you don't want users to be able to execute this, you should do the shutdown thing in an own user (e.g root).