Rollout help requested
Submitted by srlinuxx on Fri, 04/11/2008 - 09:29.
A friend is soliticing advice for a project he's working on. It involves a small library that needs one of its computers limited to only a browser accessing one website where the card catalogue is stored. His words are probably the best:
What's the best way (distro, app, etc) to create a single purpose Linux
desktop?The local public library asked me (as in more pro bono consulting for Tom)
what options they have for their card catalog workstations. Their card
catalog app is a web based SaaS (software as a service) hosted off-site by
their "library software vendor" (meaning I have no clue who it is).So all they need is a simple browser pointed to one (and only one) web site.
No other applications can be run, no other web site visited, etc. - just
that one site sandboxed on that workstation.But I don't know how to lock down the Linux desktop so that ONLY the browser
can run. Preferable, the browser can't be minimized, and nothing else is
visible or runnable (via GUI or Hotkey).I'm guessing there is a "Kiosk" app or distro or something?
Thanks to anyone and everyone for any suggestions,
Susan
re: Rollout help
Haven't used it, but the KDE Kiosk app seems to be just what you need. Information here.
As far as limiting what web
As far as limiting what web sites are available, this could be done with most Firewall-gui's or by manipulating iptables directly. All firewall-gui's I have tried lets you choose "Allow only from.." Just put the ip to the website in to this field and it should be alright. The kiosk-thing itself could probably be done by installing a kiosk-plugin, which I know is available for Firefox 2, if not Firefox 3. Not sure if the plugins work in Linux, but do a search on addons.mozilla.org. The good thing about making the changes in Firefox directly is that you can have a really lightweight Window Manager underneath it.
Oh yeah, and I found this:
Oh yeah, and I found this: http://webconverger.com/about/
BBS is the only solution ? dialup/broadband connection ?
Embedded solution with a browser made of only a terminal is the simplest. QNX had a demo back in 1998, which is on a single floppy, and maybe still available by request. It is a complete operating system with only 750k lines of codes but includes cpu, dram, and dialup modem. Floppy is used by bios.
It has Neutrino window manager and html browser.
It can connect to any internet website as an embedded system, if you limit to a single link provided for the browser.
Mustang BBS software of olden days, of course, is much simpler. You use a simple Floppy operating system with dialup capability. then dialup a bbs on pots. The bbs will communicated with your terminal(free in Microsoft Works office suite) in your operating system. You connect by telephone number exclusively.
Have fun? BBS ia the way to go for many cell phones.