Re: [gentoo-user] OT: parental control software

[Michael Mol]

On 03/20/2013 07:04 AM, Neil Bothwick wrote:
> I'm looking for software that can be used to control a child's usage of
> the computer (not Internet filtering). At the very least it should be
> able to control length of login sessions and when the child is able to
> login. Ideally it would also be able to control access to programs, for
> example education programs can be used for a couple of hours but games
> for only 30 mins at a time (net control software can be used to deal with
> online versions). There are other situations where this sort of thing is
> useful, so it need not necessarily be a package aimed specifically at
> parental controls.
>
> Timekpr looks the ideal candidate, except it hasn't had a release in
> over three years.
>
> Any suggestions?

I've been studying Kerberos a great deal lately, and so that's naturally
where my mind went when I read this. Take the practicality of the idea
with a grain of salt. I also make no claims to know exactly how to
implement this for programs not already inherently kerberized.

You might use Kerberos to enforce access limits by associating services
with each thing you wish to control, giving the auth tickets a short
rollover period, and refusing to regrant after a ticket has been rolled
over enough times in one day.

That easily covers the question of "when the child is able to log in",
and could also work for "enforce the length of login sessions" if you're
able to use a thin client model, or put the user's profile on a
kerberized samba or nfs server. I don't know what mechanisms are
available to force clean shutdowns of user sessions, though; anything I
can think of risks data loss if apps haven't committed all open data to
storage yet.