Ubuntu 12.04 Lockdown

[william_ia]

Does any one know how to lock down the desktop on Ubuntu 12.04?
We are deploying pc's for public use and need them locked down so users can't change anything on them.

[Eglefino]

I'm no specialist or IT-man, but even it's another browser/platform you can ask yourself the same question. By the way, sorry for my English language (I've learned it 38-years ago ).

If a person have logged in than you can give every person his own rights to open the software or the program, you can read that here: http://linuxcommand.org/lts0070.php

Even for software on an hard-disk you can place it with a '.' dot for the file or directory/map and it is hidden! All is most easy to use.

Success

[Paqman]

You may want to take a look at Kubuntu. The KDE desktop it uses has a "kiosk mode" which is designed for highly locked down public computers.

[Charles-2007]

Please look at the PDF file I posted under my user name charles-2007 in the forum. This is for XFCE Ubuntu i.e. Xubuntu 12.04 versioning. I haven't been able to break what I built. I'm not totally happy with the Firefox lockdown and am still manipulating that.

You must be logged into the forum to get the file.

Best wishes.

[william_ia]

These are all good. What I really need is the ability to lock down the user account so they can only open either Firefox or Vmware Client.
Will the permissions do this possibly? Like I said we need to lock it down that only these two things can be opened from the user side.

[william_ia]

All good idea, but does not really address the problem. We don't need to just lock applications, but the entire desktop for the user account we set up. We do not want them adding, changing or modifying anything with that desktop. In other words after it is locked down the only way to change it is to log back in on the administrator account.

Has anyone managed to be able to do this yet with Ubuntu 12.04?

Is it even possible?

[krishnan t s k]

i may be dead wrong here... but couldn’t you just create another user without administrator privileges(Standard user)? that way any modification to be made to software or files on access will require admin permissions... then again.. I’ve never really used a non administrator account so i wouldn’t know the principles on which it works
have a nice day

[jbcohen]

Isn't Ubuntu pretty locked down right out of the box?

[raja.genupula]

we can create a root user also . all we need to have access to Grub restore menu.

[bantuvez]

We just have to use a GRUB password to prevent this.