Hi John,
Thanks! I was not aware of LTSP, will take a look.
-- Grigory Shamov Westgrid/ComputeCanada Site Lead University of Manitoba E2-588 EITC Building, (204) 474-9625
From: Roundtable <roundtable-bounces@muug.camailto:roundtable-bounces@muug.ca> on behalf of John Lange <john@johnlange.camailto:john@johnlange.ca> Reply-To: Continuation of Round Table discussion <roundtable@muug.camailto:roundtable@muug.ca> Date: Thursday, February 2, 2017 at 6:41 PM To: Continuation of Round Table discussion <roundtable@muug.camailto:roundtable@muug.ca> Subject: Re: [RndTbl] limited Linux Desktop?
The Linux Terminal Server Project was geared toward this, but it now appears un-maintained since 2013, which is fine because it's not a download but built into the distributions that support it.
Perhaps you are already aware/using it, but if not you might be able to get some useful ideas.
Alternatively, you could spin a new virtual machine for each desktop which is actually more typical way this is done these days. It requires more resources, the trade off is better security, though they could still navigate around the file system.
John
On Thu, Feb 2, 2017 at 5:24 PM, Trevor Cordes <trevor@tecnopolis.camailto:trevor@tecnopolis.ca> wrote: On 2017-02-02 Grigory Shamov wrote:
Hi All,
somehow locked to the particular users and perhaps even particular apps?
Particular users can probably be handled with custom pam rules/settings. Particular apps is much harder. I think you'd need to create an install (perhaps virtual) that just has the apps you want those users to use.
I.e., so that any Filemanager would stay under selected paths the user has access to?
That's chroot-y if you want the OS to only show the user what's in /home/foo in a secure way. However, there's no chroot method that will lock them in one data path without requiring copies of the relevant bins/libs/etc for the apps you want to run. I don't even think any of the recent developments like cgroups, docker, etc, can help you here.
Even trying to hardlink everything into a chroot environment under the user's home dir wouldn't work I don't think because of the complexity of login managers, and X in general.
Now you might be able to find a file manager that can be set to limit views to certain paths, but without something at the OS layer locking things down they can always escape somehow if they know what they are doing (or bring up a shell).
If I'm understanding what it is you're trying to do correctly, I'm afraid there may be no solution. However, if you perhaps redefine your policy goals of what exactly you're trying to protect against, perhaps you can achieve those goals without locking things down as drastically as you think you need to. _______________________________________________ Roundtable mailing list Roundtable@muug.camailto:Roundtable@muug.ca https://muug.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable
-- John Lange