[ILUG] Linux Internet Cafe Software?

[Barry O'Donovan]

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On Monday 26 April 2004 18:33, Nicholas Kelly wrote:
> It looks like I might be writing the software that handles everything
> login/logout related for an internet cafe. This will include guest logins
> and member logins. Unfortunately my Linux programming experience is very
> limited and I would greatly appreciate any suggestions that anyone could
> give me on how to get started on this project. I have extensive Java
> experience as well as some graphics programming experience with C/C++. I'm
> also familiar with PHP/MySQL.
>

Does anyone else not think this is overkill?

You're setting up a Linux based internet cafe. The easiest thing to do here 
would probably be to have one powerfull application server and cheaper 
low-powered clients.

It is a simple matter to write a basic Bash script that generates user 
accounts with random usernames and passwords at the touch of a button. These 
can be given to guests - as in they come to the counter and get handed the 
generated username/password. Make a default .logout script for these guest 
accounts so that once they are logged off the account gets deleted.

Members get to choose their own usernames and their accounts do not get 
deleted after logout.

All of this functionality is standard with every Linux distribution - 
including other nicities you might need like disk space quotas.

As for the clients themselves. How do you keep people using only the internet 
browser (and any other applications you want to GRANT them permissions to 
use, such as OpenOffice.org)?

KDE is your man! Or, more specifically, KDE Kiosk. Right now it's a bit of a 
pain to set-up and use, and there's not a lot of documentation. However KDE 
3.3 promises GUIs for setting up Kiosk permissions, etc. In the meantime it 
is there to be used via manually edited configuration files. It really is the 
ideal Internet Cafe solution.

Reagrds,
Barry


- -- 
Regards,
Barry O'Donovan

http://www.ihl.ucd.ie/

Information Hiding Laboratory,
Department of Computer Science,
University College Dublin,
Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland

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