How to make a Puppy Kiosk out of Lucid Puppy 5.2

[shadower_sc]

For those that don't want their Kiosk to access any webpages you could use public fox and black list everything. In the Public Fox Preferences click add to add a new site to blacklist, enter http://*, and that is it.

Not sure why one would want to do that, but I came across it and thought I would share.

The ProCon Latte update has not been released yet, but hopefully will be soon.

[purjuju]

Hello !

Could you explain how to install Puppy Kiosk on Hard drive ? As I'm using an old computer so cd reader is slow and usb port is 1.0 version (very slow).
Installing Puppy kiosk on hard drive should be perfect !

Thank you very much.

Julien

[oldmac2006]

The Puppy Kiosk setup CD is brilliant, I have had no trouble installing Puppy Kiosk to a HDD using the Puppy Universal Installer. I find the system runs a lot quicker off the hard drive than a CD or USB Flash drive. When using the CD I can freeze the system for short periods by loading up a couple of youtube videos.
The major problem with using a HDD is that when a user clicks on File/Open File in Firefox ...they have access to the whole file system. This Kiosk will not be within easy distance for me to repair , so I need the security of tampering with the system to be rock solid. I guess this is why a CD is a good solution for Kiosk application.
I would like to be able to use the hard drive for the speed benefit, so does anyone know how I can remove the menu bar in Firefox ... or at least the File menu.
Otherwise what are my options for keeping users from being able to alter system files??
Create a User ?
make all Files Read only ?? don't know how.
I welcome your feedback
Cheers
Mac

[oldmac2006]

I may have solved my own problem . I have loaded the add on personal-menu in Firefox.
This enables me to hide the parts of the menu bar that I do not want the users to see. The Public Fox protects users from accessing the addons once it is all installed. I will do some more testing ..but so far seems to have locked the system down better. I have hidden the File, View and Tools off the menu. Should keep the would be hackers out of the file system and trying to get into the Add ons. There is a hotkey shortcut to show the personal-menu settings. ...not sure if this would be easily figured out. It would obviously be known by any user who is familiar with the personal-menu add on. There seems to be an option to disable the hotkey ...but do not want to try that yet. If I disable the hotkey function I don't think even I will be able to get back into the tools menu to make any other changes.
Anyway, I'm real happy with the setup I have now ..looking good!!
A huge thanks to shadower_sc .... I take my hat off to you!!
Cheers
Mac

[purjuju]

Hi oldmac2006 !

Is Puppy Universal Installer in Puppy kiosk CD ?

Could you help me please ?

Thank you.

[oldmac2006]

G'day Purjuju,
The Puppy Universal Installer is on a normal Puppy 5.2 CD
Are you using Puppy in a Kiosk ??
If not then you can download a full Puppy 5.2.5 and then using the Puppy Universal Installer load it onto a HDD. The installer is on the Start menu under Setup. There are good prompts and instructions when doing it.
If using in Kiosk then load the Puppy Kiosk Setup 5.2 CD follow the instructions about remastering the Puppy Kiosk ...then remaster the Puppy to an ISO file. I loaded my ISO with the remaster files onto a USB Flash drive and then after which used the Universal Installer to create a CD and load onto a HDD. I wanted to try all options. Hope this helps.
Cheers
Mac

[shadower_sc]

Hi purjuju. This is how to start the Puppy Universal Installer.

Boot the Puppy Kiosk CD.

Click on the Menu and select RXVT Terminal Emulator.
Type "/usr/sbin/puppyinstaller".

That will start the Puppy Universal Installer.

Install to your HDD. Good to go.

I have not uninstalled or removed any programs from the original disks. All I have done is lock the user out of Puppy.

The same edits can be made to a HDD install, but I have found that a CD install is the best for my scenario. I have tried installing to the Hard Drive, but I have to be at each machine to make my changes and it tends to get complicated. With a Remastered CD I make my life simpler as I reduce the amount of time I am sitting at each different Kiosk Machine.

As a side note, if you have a PUPSAVE file your changes should save. All I have done with my Puppy Kiosk is prevent it from creating the PUPSAVE file where one does not exist.

Glad you found Puppy Kiosk useful oldmac2006.

[purjuju]

Hello guys !!!

Thank you for your support, I'm going to apply your advices !

Last question: do you know how to configure automatic boot with grub or another one? then the users doesn't need to press enter or doesn't have access to grub menu.

Thx for your help!

J

[muggins]

If you open /boot/grub/menu.lst, in a text editor, and alter the timeout line to:

Code: Select all

timeout 0

then the default will boot automatically.

[purjuju]

Thank you Muggins for your answer !

But before that, I don't find how to run GRUBCONFIG.

I've tried a command line grub-install.. but even with google, I'm not able to make it !

Sorry guys, I'm a beginner...

Thanks for your help !

[purjuju]

Never mind, I found it.
It's
/usr/sbin/grubconfig

I found it by using ps command in console of the full puppy linux live cd.
I compare the ps list before starting grubconfig and during grubconfig runs.

I hope this can help for others beginners...

[purjuju]

Hi all !

I've almost finish my kiosk !

I just need to know how to hide icons close to the clock (interfaces, volume, storage..) thank you very much for your help

[shadower_sc]

That is the JWM Tray and I posted earlier on how to edit the tray. Below is the quote from that post.
-Joe-

Customize the Menu

...

Step #2 Edit the JWM Tray
Edit the file "/root/.jwmrc-tray".
Comment out any elements you do not want listed in the taskbar. Make sure you do not Comment out the Menu. Theoretically you may be able to comment the whole thing out and just rely on the right-click menu to manage your Kiosk. Down sides to that would be that you would give up the ability to see at a glance, if the network is down or even just looking at the time.

...

[purjuju]

Hey shadower,

Indeed, I've already fallow this step and I could hide the desktop shortcut and the clock but I don't know which line I have to comment to hide interfaces, volume and storage icons


Thanks for your help

[shadower_sc]

Edit the file "/root/.jwmrc-tray".
Comment out any elements you do not want listed in the taskbar. Make sure you do not Comment out the Menu.

Comment out the <Dock/> line to remove the Volume and other icons from the JWM Tray.

Comment out the <Swallow ...> to </Swallow> to remove the xload / CPU monitoring icon from the JWM Tray.

Comment out the <Pager/> line to remove the Desktop switcher from the JWM Tray.

Trial and error are your friends. Most everything I do is poke this and see what that does. I do make some educated guesses and don't mess with things at random, but most problems can be solved by trial and error.

Good Luck!

[jaspmatt]

I'm probably missing something in these instructions but I do not understand how to password protect items in the right-click desktop menu that should not have user access.
My menu now looks like this:

Firefox web browser
Urxvt terminal emulator
NicoEdit text editor
Remaster Puppy live-CD
<separator>
Shutdown

How do I prevent users from selecting anything except Firefox and shutdown?

[shadower_sc]

Hi jaspmatt,

The short answer is that you need to only have Firefox and Shutdown in your menu. That will keep anyone (Including You) from having access to the other programs.

The Long answer is located here: Kiosk Setup Final Touches.doc

Look for the section "Finish editing the /tmp/root/.jwmrc menu:".

Let me know, if you need further guidance.

Sincerely,
-Joe-

[shadower_sc]

Hello again.

This update is a suggestion for those that do not want to update Firefox until there is a non experimental version of ProCon Latte to go along with it.

Disable the Updates to Firefox.

Open the Tools Menu and select Options. This brings up the options menu. Click on the Advanced option. Then click on the Update tab in the Advanced section. Disable the Firefox updates by removing the check mark next to Firefox. You can also disable the Automatic Updates to the Add-ons and Search Engines here as well.

[jaspmatt]

Hello shadower,

I have a remastered Puppy CD/iso with only those things in the menu from my post above.
How do I install it on my /dev/sda4 partition so that it takes the place of the full 5.2 installation that is there now? I don't want to have to boot from USB or CD. Thanks.

[shadower_sc]

...

This is how to start the Puppy Universal Installer.

Boot the Puppy Kiosk CD.

Click on the Menu and select RXVT Terminal Emulator.
Type "/usr/sbin/puppyinstaller".

That will start the Puppy Universal Installer.

Install to your HDD. Good to go.

I have not uninstalled or removed any programs from the original disk.

...

As a side note, if you have a PUPSAVE file your changes should save. All I have done with my Puppy Kiosk is prevent it from creating the PUPSAVE file where one does not exist.

...

There are some tutorials on the forum that show how to install Puppy Linux to the HDD. Search in this forum for "How to install Puppy Linux to the Hard Drive" or something like that, if you need a step by step tutorial on how to do a normal Puppy Linux install to the HDD (Hard Disk Drive).