[RndTbl] Public access machine

Mike Pfaiffer high.res.mike at gmail.com
Mon Dec 7 12:02:25 CST 2009


Sean Walberg wrote:
> A foot in the door for more unpaid work?
> 
> OTTOMH:

	Not sure what this acronym stands for.

> Your user is publicuser. Store your skeleton in /usr/local/etc/publicuser. 
> 
> In rc.local or whatever Mint calls it:
> 
> rm -rf /home/publicuser
> (cd /usr/local/etc && tar -cf - publicuser) | (cd /home && tar -xf -)
> 
> In the skeleton's .bashrc
> 
> echo "reboot" | at now + 30 minutes
> 
> I'd hate to be around when someone is typing an email at T+00:30:01 
> though. Maybe a few minutes googling for "linux kiosk" will find a far 
> more elegant solution. Not sure if you chose Mint because you like it or 
> you have a particular need, but there appear to be some custom 
> distributions or packages made for this exact purpose.

	The idea is to limit usage to 30 minutes to give other people a chance 
at the machine. There are only two machines and the other /may/ be moved 
to Linux if this one works out.

	The reason for Mint is because it's what we had around. We could have 
gone with Kubuntu 9.10 but there seem to be some issues which aren't in 
Mint 8. The kiosk idea sounds worth looking at. If it's what we're 
looking for I'll have to convince the people in charge to move from Mint 
to "kiosk".

> This also assumes the user can reboot the computer from the command 
> line. It works in Red Hat/Fedora.

	It should. I'll find out shortly.

> Sean

	Thanks for the help. I'll be able to access the machine on Friday. 
We'll see what happens then.

				Later
				Mike



> On Mon, Dec 7, 2009 at 11:33 AM, Mike Pfaiffer <high.res.mike at gmail.com 
> <mailto:high.res.mike at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>            The CLL is setting up a public access machine in the next
>     couple of
>     weeks. It is installed with Mint 8 (a multimedia Ubuntu fork). I would
>     like to set up a couple of init scripts. The first will delete the
>     public account home directory and copy a "clean" version in its place
>     each time the computer starts. The second will shut down the computer
>     after half an hour of use.
> 
>            I haven't touched on cron since university 20 years ago and
>     I've never
>     written an init script. Having written a few shell scripts I know the
>     copy script should be very simple. I'm not sure how to set up the timer
>     script or make them run on start up. Would anybody be able to fire off
>     some quick directions?
> 
>            This may be a "foot in the door" situation.
> 
>                                    Later
>                                    Mike
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> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Sean Walberg <sean at ertw.com <mailto:sean at ertw.com>>    http://ertw.com/



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