[Gllug] Building Intranet Kiosks

[Jim Cheetham]

At 10:10 11/07/2001 +0100, Wulf wrote:
>But, now that it's been running for a week or so, we're hitting some 
>problems - for example users have been resetting the home page (cos IE5 + 
>allows developers to write scripting code that does this) and playing 
>around with the toolbars. It may be possible to lock IE down even

No matter which OS/software you go with, you'll probably hit similar 
issues. You can tune your application selection (for example, Opera has a 
very good kiosk mode to it's browser) but because most applications pride 
themselves on their customiseability, sooner or later things will change.

I'm facing a similar problem at a school computer suite, and my current 
suggested solution is to make a "perfect" installation, then take a copy of 
the disk image, and periodically re-write the PC's disks with this image. 
Of course, that means that all user data must be stored off the PC (not a 
big issue) and you make it more difficult to add applications to the base 
install. However I'm sure these issues can be addressed.

I'm thinking at the moment of implementing this by taking the last 500M or 
so of the PC disk, and installing a Linux (boot details on FDD only) that 
can contact the server, and dd into the PC's primary (windows) partition. 
I'd be interested if anyone has any insights about how to handle 
customisation of the windows data (i.e. networking details, host names, etc)

Quick wafting zephyrs vex bold Jim
Jim Cheetham jim at gonzul.org


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