Need to preserve installs as first day.

[Crow]

I've been wondering how to lock the desktop in my educative remaster once it is installed since the kids at school can easily change configs and that make teachers go crazy 

In Windows there is an application (I don't know it's name) that every time you reboot the computer is like the first day, no changes are stored. That application is used in places where many people uses the computers: schools, internet cafes and others.

What can be done in Linux about this?

[twa]

Crow,
not sure this is what you are asking for:
Configure your computer>Security
from there you can change many parameters.
cheers

[pags]

Are you concerned about OS and application updates, or would you do that as a re-install?

Have you considered a "poor man's install" with Persistence?  You could then wipe the persistence files, and be back at day one.

Just a thought...

[T6]

the windows app you mention is deepfreeze but that one deletes everything done during the session when you shutdown or restart the machine, only what was present before you installed it remains on the hard disk, this includes updates and personal files saved to hard disk

i ignore if deepfreeze exist for linux, but it does exist for windows and mac

http://www.faronics.com

a native linux apps doing this, i never heard of it

i recommend just wiping the user and creating a new one but not sure if it works for this customized version

[pags]

...
i recommend just wiping the user and creating a new one but not sure if it works for this customized version

That's pretty good...make a copy of the user's home directory from install, and have a script that restores it after logout (or on a regular basis from a cron job).

Depends on how Crow wants to see this working...

[T6]

or maybe just the configs and leave the rest of the user folders untouched?

this could work well if it can be made to work before logging in but not sure how long could it take to delete and restore all those config files

[Crow]

Thank you all, forgot to say that the remaster is in LXDE

Security doesn't do what I need
The poor man's install sounds good if I never update which is possible since most machines doesn't have internet
Nope, no Deepfreeze for Linux  and to make a new user while it works implies a direct intervention from me and recreate Wbar which is not a good idea
Pags idea of making a copy of home (or configs as T6 says) and have a script that restores it after logout sounds great, unfortunately I don't have the slightest idea on script writing and the forum doesn't have a place to ask for personalized software 

I think I will try the poor man's install and enroll me in some course of Python

[kjpetrie]

There is a place to learn to personalise software - the Advanced Users' section.

[pags]

Thank you all, forgot to say that the remaster is in LXDE

Security doesn't do what I need
The poor man's install sounds good if I never update which is possible since most machines doesn't have internet
Nope, no Deepfreeze for Linux  and to make a new user while it works implies a direct intervention from me and recreate Wbar which is not a good idea
Pags idea of making a copy of home (or configs as T6 says) and have a script that restores it after logout sounds great, unfortunately I don't have the slightest idea on script writing and the forum doesn't have a place to ask for personalized software 

I think I will try the poor man's install and enroll me in some course of Python

A script wouldn't be too hard...just need to get your ducks in a row as to what the details might be.

Do you have a timeframe for this?  I don't mind helping, if I can...

[Crow]

Thank you pags, last time I programmed something was a couple of educative games back in 1985 or 1986 I went to coursera.org and this Monday will begin a course on introduction to programming, it say's they use Python for the homework

I don't have a time frame, in fact is something I listened and I thought it could be a feature for the next remaster.

The Advanced User Section is for... well, advanced users and I'm not a CLI guy so I better learn something before I go there.

I think what pags said has a lot of sense: a snapshot of home, except some folders like Documents, Images and so on and the possibility to recover that image at will or automatically every shutdown, that way the kids works would be safe.

[CaptainSarcastic]

Could you set User permissions to read-only for all system folders?  It sounds like you don't want them to be able to customize settings and appearance, and it seems like locking down their permissions on the right folders might do the trick.

[kjpetrie]

You mean on your system they're not?

[menotu]

Setting it up as a "kiosk / kiosk mode"  may of done it - the only thing I could find in the repo relates to xfce

xfce-kiosk - Kiosk support for the Xfce desktop environment

Doing a web search for xfce-kiosk listed the following page but it's not very detailed

http://wiki.xfce.org/howto/kiosk_mode

=====================
The following may give some tips

Creating a kiosk with Linux and X11: 2011 edition
Posted on November 5, 2011 by Alan.

.............finding a solution to the problem “on the cheap”, and being a fairly new Linux fanatic at the time, I figured I’d see what I could do using free software. This led to my first kiosk project.

Since then, I’ve refined my approach time and again, deploying kiosks throughout my organization just about anywhere a web-browser kiosk can be put to use. The original library system has been completely rebuilt with newer hardware and software, but is fundamentally the same system I set up five years ago.

Practice

In this tutorial, I’ll walk through how I set up a kiosk for use at my workplace, and why I choose the different components that I do.

Choose and install the OS

The first task is to get a basic OS install. You can do this with about any distribution of Linux you feel comfortable with, but I’d recommend taking the following aspects into consideration:

Once you have the basic install, we need to get a few software components on there:

    xorg is vital for displaying video
    gdm (version 2) will be the display manager
    matchbox-window-manager will be our window manager
    chromium-browser will be our sample kiosk application
    emacs for editing text, though you can install your favorite CLI text editor instead
    rsync will be part of our security lock-down later
    openssh-server is useful for doing remote administration

Full blog / tutorial

=======================================

If you won't be doing any updating (or minimal updates) I guess you could work around it but it does say

Don’t use a rolling release or a distro that updates every few months. The idea is to put out a kiosk and not touch it for a few years if you don’t need to. Use something with a long release cycle, or a long-term support release.

[Crow]

Extraordinary finding Menotu, I will read that. The part about rolling release distro doesn't bother me since many of that installs doesn't have an internet connection at this time.

Thank you

[Crow]

I think something like this would be great    but it doesn't exist, I think

http://extragear.kde.org/apps/kiosktool/#status