Parental Controls re-visited

[shane2peru]

I have used Ubuntu for a very long time now. I was very glad when timekpr 'came to town' and it works great with gnome. With the recent swing of things in Ubuntu, I swung over to KDE and am very pleased with KDE. I started looking for parental controls in KDE and to my surprise that is an area that has been neglected in KDE. A quick search shows no development what so ever in this area.

http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3102100.0
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3082955.0

These two threads are the only thing that I could find, and recommend Dan's Guardian, and OpenDNS. Now I have been around both, and DG is anything but simple to setup. Both are good for filtering internet usage, but nothing that controls time usage.

Timekpr - https://launchpad.net/timekpr the devs no longer are developing it, and I'm not sure it works on KDE. I have used it successfully for years on Gnome. And it is a wonderful application, I don't ever have to monitor the time they spend on the computer, because timekpr does. My question is:

Why is it so difficult to get an app, in Gnome, or KDE in Linux in general to help with Parental Controls? There are scores of scripts, and home brew howto's on this, I even wrote my own sloppy script for a time when I was not using Ubuntu. How can we get a dev's attention in this very much needed area? Did I overlook anything? Please don't mention Nanny, as I have used it, it is not under development, and doesn't work (under gnome). Yet another example of a dead project in this area. Any help or ideas on this would be appreciated.

Please don't post about how to raise kids, this is not a kid raising question, this is a software question.

Concerned Parent,
Shane

[woodsmoke]

Re: Parental Controls re-visited

I know that this is "sending you off the farm" but have you considered Edubuntu?

I would NOT have recommended it two years ago but I think that it has "come of age".

They "may" have kept the apps you want integrated into the system.

It is "intended" for the classroom but is actually useable by anyone.

woodsmoke

[Snowhog]

Re: Parental Controls re-visited

Any help or ideas on this would be appreciated.

See Restrict users' access on Linux systems.

"When we talk about forcing a user to log off, what we’re really talking about is implementing time restrictions on the account for system access or services. The easiest way I’ve found to implement time restrictions is using a plug-in module called Linux-PAM."

PAM - Pluggable Authentication Module - is already installed/used by *buntu. The configuration file referred to - /etc/security/time.conf is present on a *buntu system.

"Pluggable Authentication Module (PAM) is a mechanism for authenticating users. Specifically, we’re going to use the pam_time module to control timed access for users to services.

Using the pam_time module, we can set access restrictions to a system and/or specific applications at various times of the day as well as on specific days or over various terminal lines. Depending on the configuration, you can use this module to deny access to individual users based on their name, the time of day, the day of week, the service they’re applying for, and their terminal from which they’re making the request."

Writing the lines controlling time access for specified users is very straight forward.

"Here’s the syntax for a rule:

services;ttys;users;times

1. The first field — services — is a logic list of PAM service names.
2. The second field — tty — is a logic list of terminal names.
3. The third field — users — is a logic list of users or a netgroup of users.
4. The fourth field — times — indicates the applicable times.

Here’s an example of a typical set of rules:

login ; * ; !bobby ; MoTuWeThFr0800-2000
login ; * ; !root ; !Al0000-2400
http ; * ; !bobby ; MoTuWeThFr0800-2000
http ; * ; !root; !Al0000-2400

These rules restrict user bobby from logging on between the hours of 0800 and 2000, and they also restrict Internet access during these hours. Root would be able to logon at any time and browse the Internet during all times as well.

Note: The system logs errors with these rules as syslog(3)."

Looks very much like this will meet your needs.

[ardvark71]

Re: Parental Controls re-visited

Please don't post about how to raise kids, this is not a kid raising question, this is a software question.

I see you've been down that road with others before

Regards...

[shane2peru]

Re: Parental Controls re-visited

@snowhog

Thanks for the reply. Looking at the PAM thing, it does look very close, however I want to limit the kids based on amount of time. I'm about 90% sure that timekpr (which currently works with Kubuntu 11.04) runs somewhat off this PAM system. However, I don't see where the PAM ca limit the amount of time. We allow kids A B C to play one day for one hour. That one hour can between 0800-2100, Then kids D E F can play on the other day with the same time restrictions. They all have their own account. However the key is that they get 60 minutes. They may log on for 30 minutes at noon, and then say log on again at 4PM, and the computer knows they only have 30 minutes left. It is a GREAT system! And best of all it is all wrapped in a friendly GUI. I think PAM can handle some of that, but not necessarily the time limit factor, and how much time was used before. By all means if it can I'm all ears. PAM seems like I could learn to use it, but really is lacking a GUI for friendliness.

@ardvark71

Well, not directly, but have seen it in enough of the threads on the Ubuntu forums. Just wanted to make it abundantly clear here that I wasn't going to mess around with that topic. Everyone has their own opinion on child rearing, and many people that don't even have children.

Shane

[Linkmaster]

Re: Parental Controls re-visited

I'm replying to this topic wondering if anyone found the answer to shane2peru's question. This could very well be relevant to what my mom needs[and it would be another reason I have to convince her to switch to Linux], though I have my own question to add: does the PAM thing offer internet filtering? Or is it simply on/off?

[GreyGeek]

Re: Parental Controls re-visited

Timekpr's website is here.

It is at version 0.3.2 and they claim it works for Kubuntu 10.04. There are repository for Kubuntu up to Natty.
I added the two Lucid maintainer URLs to my sources.list, installed it and ran it. It requires at least one "normal" account, so there was nothing it could do. I used sudo dpkg --purge timekpr to remove it.

[shane2peru]

Re: Parental Controls re-visited

Timekpr's website is here.

It is at version 0.3.2 and they claim it works for Kubuntu 10.04. There are repository for Kubuntu up to Natty.
I added the two Lucid maintainer URLs to my sources.list, installed it and ran it. It requires at least one "normal" account, so there was nothing it could do. I used sudo dpkg --purge timekpr to remove it.

Right, I should have come back and let everyone know that I did get timekpr installed and seems to work fine. I'm getting mixed messages about it's development. It is a great application and used every day for/by my kids.

I'm replying to this topic wondering if anyone found the answer to shane2peru's question. This could very well be relevant to what my mom needs[and it would be another reason I have to convince her to switch to Linux], though I have my own question to add: does the PAM thing offer internet filtering? Or is it simply on/off?

From what I have read on the PAM thing no, it doesn't filter. I use OpenDNS for my filtering and have ddclient setup to check my ip address. I wrote a how to on that on the Ubuntu forums a while ago. I think I made a wiki entrance on it too but that may have been several years ago. Very easy way to go.

Shane

[Linkmaster]

Re: Parental Controls re-visited

thansk GG and shane2peru! I'll mess around with it so that I can show my mom how it works, and if[it should] it works better then Windows Vista/7 parental controls, I'll use it as leverage :P