Control Keys

[MonkeyBoy]

Is there a way to disable the control keys in Firefox for the Kiosk edition?

You have it where the address bar can be disabled, but a simple Control-T opens the address bar in a new tab and allows user input.

I'm sure there are other control keys that will allow the same thing.

And you could usually disable the control keys by hitting control-shift-F12, but it doesn't work in Kiosk edition.

[MonkeyBoy]

Can also get address bar when clicking cntrl-L, cntrl-K and cntrl-J

[fanthom]

hello MonkeyBoy,

to disable Ctrl keys please do as follows:
a) unpack the ISO somewhere
b) mount /porteus/base/001-core.xzm on a loop device:

Code: Select all

mount -o loop 001-core.xzm /mnt/cdrom

or install squashfs-tools and unpack it:

Code: Select all

unsquashfs 001-core.xzm

c) copy /etc/xdg/openbox/rc.xml from mounted/unsquashed 001-core.xzm and save as /porteus/rootcopy/etc/xdg/openbox/rc.xml (in the folder where you unpacked the ISO)
d) edit rc.xml and search for '<!-- Disable following keybindings for firefox -->' then add a code which disables both (left, right) ctrl keys completely:

Code: Select all

  <keybind key="Control_L">
    <action name="Execute">
    </action>
  </keybind>

  <keybind key="Control_R">
    <action name="Execute">
    </action>
  </keybind>

e) create new ISO with /porteus/make_iso.sh script
should be ok then

i'll tweak the wizard for next release so when user choose 'Disable navigation bar' then ctrl keys will be disabled by default.
thanks for bug report and please let us know if you find something else.

[MonkeyBoy]

Thanks for the quick reply.

I'll give it a shot.

Trying to make a workstation for students to only be able to go to an accepted list of websites, and since there is no whitelist, I figured I'd make an html page on our website that has the approved webpage list.

But it defeats the purpose if they can get to an address bar.

Looking forward to a version that has a whitelist.

Awesome product, so far.

[MonkeyBoy]

And I guess they'll just have to manually power down the computer, since turning off the cntrl key will prevent them from hitting cntrl-alt-delete.....

Maybe a power off button in the upper right hand corner???

[MonkeyBoy]

That worked.

But the F6-key by itself takes you to the address bar.

Would that text be ?? :

<keybind key="Function_6">
<action name="Execute">
</action>
</keybind>

[fanthom]

And I guess they'll just have to manually power down the computer, since turning off the cntrl key will prevent them from hitting cntrl-alt-delete.....

right. so will be better to disable ctrl+t,+j,+k,+l and F6 only.

please follow this wiki to find a name for F6 (or any other) key:
http://openbox.org/wiki/Help:Bindings#Keys

btw: added blacklist/whitelist to my wizard TODO list for next release.

[MonkeyBoy]

Thanks for the list of function keys.

And even though you disable the cntrl keys, ctrl-alt-delete still works for shutdown message.

Sorry for being a pest. But not only am I new to your kiosk software, but new to Linux as well.

Been running MS since IBM-DOS....

[fanthom]

users feedback is very important to us (especially in Kiosk which has smaller userbase).
thanks for helping us with this bug.

[captainwhimsical]

Hello,

I just registered for this forum to express my appreciation to the developers. The Porteus kiosk edition is really a great product.

As to this thread, I second the request for a whitelist functionality built into the wizard. This is the single feature that is missing to make Porteus useful to me on a daily basis.

Thank you for all your hard work.

[fanthom]

hi captainwhimsical,

ok - will add whitelist to next kiosk release but i'm worrying it may cause some confusion as it's going to be based on iptables (Public Fox does not have this functionality so need to go down on the kernel level).
will see

[Hamza]

will add whitelist to next kiosk release but i'm worrying it may cause some confusion as it's going to be based on iptables

IPTables is based on IP and not domain name. The whitelist would be efficient on dedicated IPs only if you use this method.

[captainwhimsical]

Dear fanthom and other developers,

thank you so much for the new release. It's absolutely incredible that this feature request has been incorporated so rapidly.

Actually MonkeyBoy's other request (disabling cntrl keys) is also important to me, and by itself solves my main problems even if I don't get the whitelist to work the way I was hoping. So in any case, you made my day and I'll donate to the project once my mid-month salary arrives.

Nevertheless, I'd still like to ask about the functionality of the whitelist feature. I was hoping that I could restrict the browser to using, for example, Gmail only (or some other webmail client, or even any *.google.* URL). But from what I can find online there doesn't seem to exist a stable mapping from URL to a set of IP addresses, i.e. I don't know how to translate "whitelist Gmail only" into "whitelist {ip address x, ip address y, ...}".

Is it possible, or impossible altogether, or is it perhaps at least possible for a given location and a given network connection?

My apologies if this is an "Internet 101" question, but I didn't manage to google the answer and perhaps you can clarify how to use the whitelist feature in the 2.0.4 kiosk release. I really appreciate your help so far in this thread.

[captainwhimsical]

Obviously wildcards in the blacklist would also solve the issue, but they don't seem to work.

[fanthom]

hi captainwhimsical,

from what I can find online there doesn't seem to exist a stable mapping from URL to a set of IP addresses, i.e. I don't know how to translate "whitelist Gmail only" into "whitelist {ip address x, ip address y, ...}".

i'm also not aware of such tool thus wrote that whitelist may bring a lot of confusion.
whitelist is meant for allowing an access to simple sites which does not pull plenty of links from other sites. whitelisting of onet.pl (213.180.141.140) would be a really hard task while walutomat.pl (91.102.117.188) should work just fine.

wildcards in the blacklist would also solve the issue, but they don't seem to work

there is no need to use wildcards, just write a word and should be ok.
for example - if you request to block a 'google' then every URL with 'google' in name should be blocked.
please provide an example which did not work for you.