[OFB Cafe] Kiosk Web Filtering/Restrictions

[Donald Spoon]

Timothy Butler wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>     Can anyone recommend a really, really simple way to restrict web 
> access in a Ubuntu/GNOME/Firefox kiosk so that it can only be used to 
> access authorized sites? The system is meant to be a library catalog 
> lookup computer and so I only want it to be able to access the site 
> which hosts the catalog.
>
>     I tried using the willowng module in Ubuntu, but it fails on 
> attempting to import "dl" on line 23 every time I try to start it.
>
>     Thoughts?
>
>     Thanks,
>         Tim
>
I think most current firewall programs will allow modification of 
outbound connection policy as well as inbound policy.  I use a GUI- 
based firewall called FIRESTARTER here that allows me to modify the 
outbound policy for my LAN to be either a blacklist type policy (say 
which sites you don't want to connect to) or a whitelist policy (list 
the sites you CAN connect to).  It is fairly simple to set up (caters to 
the Geriactric set) and seems to work well for me.  I am pretty sure it 
is available as a package for UBUNTU... I know it is available for Debian.

You can do the same thing if you write your own "rules" and 
roll-your-own firewall.  That is too much thinking for me...

-Don Spoon-