[CS-FSLUG] Kiosk Web Filtering/Restrictions

[Sophie Hamilton]

Hi Tim,

Regarding the 'dl' issue, I'm led to believe by Google that it won't
work properly on amd64 systems, so that might be your issue.

On your other question - what do you mean by really, really simple?

If the site is on the Internet, then personally, the way I'd do it is
by changing the routing table to only allow access to your DNS
servers, and the IP address of that site, which would make it so that
the system literally doesn't know how to get to any other IP, instead
of being a wall which someone could potentially get past. However,
that's not simple and would mean that it would need to be updated if
things changed, which is probably not what you want.

Another not-so-simple method could be to use tinyproxy and get Web
requests to go through that; you can then enable the FilterDefaultDeny
configuration option and add the acceptable domains in the filter
file. But it's probably not simple enough to describe to someone else
who may not know how to do it, which I'm guessing is why you're
asking?

On a more simple level, there's a Firefox extension called BlockSite -
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3145 - that supports
acting as both a blacklist or a whitelist. It also removes the link
from links to sites that are blocked, leaving just the text, which
might be handy.

Hope this helps. :D

 - Sophie.

On 7/8/09, Timothy Butler <tbutler at ofb.biz> 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
>
>  ---
>  Timothy R. Butler | "The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the
> window-panes,
>  Editor, OfB.biz   | The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the
> window-panes
>  tbutler at ofb.biz   | Licked  its  tongue  into the  corners  of  the
> evening,
>  timothybutler.us  | Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains."
>                                                                 -- T.S.
> Eliot
>
>
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