Embedded machine with fc3

[Billy Tallis]

On Thu, 17 Mar 2005 00:41:15 +0800, HaJo Schatz <hajo at hajo.net> wrote:
> On Tue, 2005-03-15 at 12:26 +0000, Pete Savage wrote:
> > Hi, I work in a school and want to make a help point using, fc3, being a
> > very avid fc3 user.  I'm creating a point and click interface in html and
> > using firefox.  I have some code to disable the right click.  but by doing
> > some random button pressing, the little darlings can still get the command
> > bar up down the bottom, and hence get into the system
> > Is there a way to disable the application switching....they have no keyboard
> > just a mouse...all I basically want is to totally disable them leaving
> > mozilla an nothing else,
> > any ideas !?
> > Pete
> If you really only need firefox (and there possibly only one window,
> only leaving people the choice to open multiple tabs), you could:
> 
> - Create a GRUB boot entry to boot into runlevel 4 by adding "4" to the
> respective "kernel"-line in /etc/grub.conf
> - auto-login user "darling" on tty 6 in run-level 4 by adding
> "darl:4:respawn"/sbin/mingetty --autologin darling tty6"
> - Start a script in X when user darling logs in on tty6 by adding the
> following to the end of /home/darling/.bash_profile:
>   case "`tty`" in
>     /dev/tty6) ~/startme.sh;;
>   esac
> - The script be firing up firefox in an X session and, upon termination
> of firefox, automagically shutting down X, logging the user out (upon
> which he'd be logged in again and the sequence start anew). You'd put
> this into /home/darling/startme.sh:
> #!/bin/bash
> xinit /usr/bin/firefox
> logout
> 
> You wouldn't get a WM that way, but do you really need one?
> 
> Your next task will be to possibly chrooting "darling", as an inclined
> user can always do a "file-open" and just browse to anywhere within the
> system path...
> 
Rather than chrooting (though that may be a good idea still), you
should investigate how to restrict what options are availible to the
user in firefox. Here we have a bank of thin clients that let the user
run firefox but have all but the file and edit menus disabled. In the
about:config page, there are options set to not store anything to
disk. The config files are also read only, as far as I can tell.