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How to keep users from messing up their desktops (Linux.com)
Linux.com presents an
excerpt from Linux Annoyances for Geeks. "While I prefer
allowing every user to customize his system, some managers may want to keep
users from messing up a standard configuration. There are two basic
approaches to this process. First, you can disable access to the key
tools. Second, you can change ownership and permissions on associated
configuration files to prevent changes by regular users."
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How to keep users from messing up their desktops (Linux.com) Posted Jun 16, 2006 20:24 UTC (Fri) by philips (guest, #937) [Link] The author haven't heard of KDE Kiosk it seems. Open http://www.kde.org/areas/sysadmin/ and search for Kiosk.
My expereience was that for many users creating new second account was sufficient. Can't recall creating third ;-) User messes up acoount. I create second account for him and transfer all his data to the new account. They still at times try to experiment with various settings on first account, while in second one changing only changing what was okay to change in first. At least that what I try to teach to do newcomers.
My experience of working with people migrated from Windows was that people were in fact scared messing up the system. ("Scared", "terrified", "humilated" - who of PC users haven't spent night reinstalling M$Windows?) When they were realizing that all changes they do (infamous "messing up the system") can be easily reveresed (unlike Wind0ze) it's served as good compensation for their retraining on new platform.
As admin, I never cared much what they do with personal accounts - most of the work I needed to do was done in shell anyway. Few users toyed with their bash_profile/bashrc - so it didn't matter much. (Especially after I taught myself to use "/usr/bin/env -")
P.S. At times simple "rm -rf ~/.kde; cp -ar /etc/skel/.kde ~" is also sufficient.
How to keep users from messing up their desktops (Linux.com) Posted Jun 17, 2006 2:20 UTC (Sat) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link] > The author haven't heard of KDE Kiosk it seems.
This isn't /. We usually read the articles before commenting on them
The article specifically mentioned kiosk mode, which I had read of, but
I don't use GNOME, so wasn't familiar with its setup in that regard, so
Duncan
How to keep users from messing up their desktops (Linux.com) Posted Jun 18, 2006 23:27 UTC (Sun) by philips (guest, #937) [Link] >> The author haven't heard of KDE Kiosk it seems.> This isn't /. We usually read the articles before commenting on them here.
Oops. Seems I missed that part. In fact, I was interested more in Gnome part. With KDE I know how it is. Gnome on desktop is still far target for me. I haven't seen large Gnome deployments requiring such kind of administration.
Over here in Europe, most people use KDE since it's historically better supported european languages. (Trolltech is european company. KDE is partially sponsored by european gov'ts.)
GConf Posted Jun 16, 2006 21:20 UTC (Fri) by elanthis (guest, #6227) [Link] Hence why GConf/GNOME are so great in the corporate world. Simply lock down the keys you don't want users to change, and that's that.
GConf Posted Jun 16, 2006 23:16 UTC (Fri) by petegn (guest, #847) [Link] and then along comes knoppix and bingo all sorted out once again
GConf Posted Jun 17, 2006 8:38 UTC (Sat) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link] If you read the article, you saw that KDE configs have the same functionality through the "Immutable" flag (look for "$i" in the article)
The KDE KioskTool also gives a simple GUI for all of those locks.
How to keep users from messing up their desktops (Linux.com) Posted Jun 17, 2006 3:00 UTC (Sat) by Richard_J_Neill (subscriber, #23093) [Link] What about "How to keep the distro from messing itself up" ?In particular, Mandriva has a nasty habit of auto-running magic which re-generates config files. (I regularly have to undo its "fixes" to xorg.conf).
Unfortunately, you can't just chown -r the file, because root ignores the permissions. And chattr isn't supported on reiserfs. Is there a better solution?
How to keep users from messing up their desktops (Linux.com) Posted Jun 17, 2006 5:43 UTC (Sat) by linuxrocks123 (guest, #34648) [Link] That happened to my brother. Mandrake would run "security" magic thatmade his CD-RW burner unusable for burning except by root. As root, he set up a crontab to change the permissions back directly after the magic ran.
The magic responded by deleting the device file for his CD-RW drive. No,
I think the only thing you can do to stop Mandrake/Mandriva's magic if you
How to keep users from messing up their desktops (Linux.com) Posted Jun 17, 2006 10:28 UTC (Sat) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Sounds like the 'better' solution is to just stop using Mandriva.
Undoing the administrator's changes to configuration files and settings is simply moronic. I can't beleive they'd do something like that.
For a Gnome stuff corrisponding to stuff along the lines of KDE's koisk mode would be stuff like Sabayon (a GUI for setting up desktop profiles, a sort of WYSIWYG gconf editor.)
How to keep users from messing up their desktops (Linux.com) Posted Jun 17, 2006 13:30 UTC (Sat) by finster (guest, #32338) [Link] I was too afraid of desktop woes being caused by the ~90 university students that use our linux machines, so I chose WindowMaker. Have not had any problems in four years, and did not have to lock down anything. If we do, there is always 'wmaker --static' to come to the rescue. It is good to see that KDE and Gnome can be 'locked down' though. I can think of some staff that could benefit!
How to keep users from messing up their desktops (Linux.com) Posted Jun 17, 2006 17:41 UTC (Sat) by sfeam (subscriber, #2841) [Link] Two ways to win the battle against Mandriva's security subsystem:
1) Disable msec altogether
2) Find and edit the msec configuration files.
I agree that msec is entirely too smart for its own good, but once you find the configuration files it's no worse than configuring anything else that requires an editor. If you're looking for a GUI to set the security setting, though, you're out of luck. In that case I'd recommend just uninstalling msec.
How to keep users from messing up their desktops (Linux.com) Posted Jun 19, 2006 20:49 UTC (Mon) by xorbe (subscriber, #3165) [Link] Take away the mouse and keyboard. ;-)
Don't take it away. Replace it with... Posted Jun 20, 2006 17:12 UTC (Tue) by GreyWizard (guest, #1026) [Link] http://www.tburke.net/fun_stuff/pictures/computers/stupid...
No buttons, no problems. ;-)
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