hi Matt (et al) there are a number of ways of locking down desktops, something i working on with a couple of guys in Sandwell LEA. They want to use KDE, i think Gnome (Helixcode) or even Star Office or Netscape maybe the way to go. For a start there is a useful mini-Howto, Public-Web-Browser on www.linuxdoc.org, or i can send it, which shows how to boot straight to netscape (it does navigator in the howto, but it'll also work with composer). The same method could be used to use the Star Office desktop (pretty powerful) or Nautilus (www.eazel.com) which used the Mozillia engine for Gnome/Helixcode/Ximian see some comments from Paul Nelson, k12LTSP - "After the installing the HelixCode updates or with a standard K12LTSP distribution there is a directory: /usr/lib/mc/desktop-scripts The scripts and links in this directory will be created for any user new to the system or when "recreating default icons." We configured these scripts to add icons to favorite programs and links to web sites on the desktop. You can also make changes to the default gnome menus created for users. (This can be done after the fact when logged in as root as well...) Another thing we're doing is logging in and creating the desktop as we want it and then making an archive of those settings. This lets us do a fast restore when needed. I'm planning on doing this for some LTSP library terminals that don't need access to anything other than Netscape and a few other programs. We have done all of this for the terminals running on our network but have not done much with the distribution yet. It's something we are waiting on until we have a finalized list of applications. It will be part of the final distribution as well as a page documenting ways for schools to configure for their use." i've also done it by making a Skeleton desktop (you could have a range of them for different types of users) and copy them accross as part of a script when you create a new user. Something like Phil Jones' createuser programs could be adapted to do this, although i'm pretty sure you can knock up something fairly easily. Malcolm On Thursday 22 March 2001 08:55, Matt Johnson wrote:

I managed to sort out my first linux terminal server and client setup last night. Very pleased.

Can anyone point me to some instructions for locking down a desktop (as I'm used to doing in Windoze with policies etc). I want to sort out just a few icons and options on the menu as default, so when I create users they all get the same desktop, that they cannot change.

RTFM? I want to. Anyone know where it is? ;)

Cheers

-- Matt

__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/

-- ------------------------------------ Malcolm Herbert Red Hat Europe t:+44 1483 734955 m:+44 7720 079845 ------------------------------------

On Thu, 22 Mar 2001, [iso-8859-1] Matt Johnson wrote:

I managed to sort out my first linux terminal server and client setup last night. Very pleased.

I am just starting on that adventure - which distro did you use and were there any major gotchas?

Can anyone point me to some instructions for locking down a desktop (as I'm used to doing in Windoze with policies etc). I want to sort out just a few icons and options on the menu as default, so when I create users they all get the same desktop, that they cannot change.

It depends which window manager/desktop you use. In principle if you make the menu configuration files root-writeable only, then they can't change anything. There is normally a skeleton directory which is copied when creating each user. Try /etc/skel.

RTFM? I want to. Anyone know where it is? ;)

Cheers

-- Matt

__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/

____________________________________ Giles Nunn - Network Manager Carms Schools ICT Development Centre Tel: +44 01239 710662 Fax: 710985 ____________________________________

hi all (cont) been playing with booting into Netscape et al tonight, works ok although you can do some hacks slightly differently to the Public-Web-Browser mini-HOWTO:- - run netscape direct from the shell, so you get nsmail directory set up, prior to setting .xsession to get it into Netscape every time. - the howto gives instructions for xdm, i think that kdm and gdm work the same way sort of in getting it to boot - i'm writing a script to automatically preload the netscape settings (email/cache etc for each account). Malcolm On Thursday 22 March 2001 22:34, Matt Johnson wrote:

--- Giles Nunn wrote: >

...

I am just starting on that adventure - which distro did you use and were there any major gotchas?

SuSE 7, + the latest stuff from LTSP - 'core, kernel and X server' rpms.

On the clients - Etherboot, preconfigured from the ROM-o-matic website. I'm still booting from floppies at the moment. Not sure if I'll ever burn my own EPROM!

Gotchas? A couple of hours pondering, some coffee, and only then realising that my firewall was running on the server!

Doh!

I got an old 486 client to connect to it tonight! So very pleased. Only 8 bit colour, but quite quick. (Anyone know why I can't get 16bit colour? - using SVGA server? Am I asking to much of the ol' video card in there? It's a Cirrus Logic I think)

A huge thanks to all those who posted help on the locking desktops issues. Great response. Much help.

-- Matt 'stunned at how easy it is' Johnson

__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/

-- ------------------------------------ Malcolm Herbert Red Hat Europe t:+44 1483 734955 m:+44 7720 079845 ------------------------------------

On Thu, 22 Mar 2001, Mark Evans wrote:

Also for such things as program menu's and desktop icons it dosn't make much sense having multiple copies of the same things.

I don't know about GNOME, but KDE doesn't have multiple copies of menu items. You have a central menu configuration which gets merged with users' private settings to create the menus that are seen on-screen (and you could simply make the users' menu folder read-only if you want to stop them creating their own menu entries). If you really want to lock it down to a point where no-one can change anything, just symlink the relevant folders to point to central copies (e.g. ~/.kde/Desktop -> /usr/share/commonsettings/Desktop). This also saves you having multiple copies of everything.

Makes far more sense for these to work on an "overlay" principle. Where you can have a global default, an arbitry number of group specific additions and optional user additions which are "stuck" together when someone logs in.

KDE central menu configuration with some entries set to chgrp groupname menu_entry chmod o-rx menu_entry ? That might[1] do the trick, and if it works then it doesn't require any extra code and it won't slow down the logon process. Michael [1] not tested - don't blame me if it doesn't work