Recently I was accepted in Google Summer of Code program and my task is to revamp pessulus lockdown editor, to bring it up to date (dconf, GTK+3, etc.).
In short, the plan is to make an lockdown editor, that is easier to use than dconf-editor with common configuration presets. The work is not only to make gsettings more accessible, but also to implement new lockdown features, if necessary.
In my next blog post I will publish list of lockdown features that the new pessulus incarnation should support, list of lockdown scenarios and default settings for those scenarios.
My projects wiki stub has some basic information. My nickname in IRC is Tranzistors and if you are interested in locking down computers, feel free to contact me.
Are you planning to use Vala for the rewrite? that would be cool..
Since performance for such program is not an issue, it will we written in python.
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That’s great news, we run edubuntu in schools and are about to switch from 10.04 (which we could lock down for safety/stability/efficiency) to 12.04 which we don’t seem to be able to. So I have a couple of questions…
1. What’s your time frame for this? (Not being pushy, just curious!)
2. Will you be looking at Gnome Shell primarily or also crossover for Unity?
Thanks for your efforts, if you need testers let me know…
Steve
My guess of the time frame — the software itself should be done by September. But this is only for the pessulus itself. Most likely not all of the lockdown features of external software will be implemented by then. Most likely by 12.10 pessulus will be up and ready and for 13.04 everything should be ready.
Thanks for reminding about Unity, first priority is gnome shell. If that is complete, adding support for Unity should be easy.
As for testers, I would love to have as many of them as possible. I will blog here about development news and requests for feedback and testing will be announced here.
This is wonderful news! In using Ubuntu in education one common need is to provide students with limited choices… you can use this this and this program, but not that one (even though that one is more entertaining!).
A program to provide limited choices is one of those few, “make or break” features–if you don’t have it teachers mostly won’t want to use Ubuntu, if you do have it, well, cool, let me try it out…
The Edubuntu user lists may provide you with access to a great and motivated community. –There’s a dev list: edubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
–a users list: edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com
–and a broad ‘interested’ list: ubuntu-education@lists.ubuntu.com
While the #edubuntu irc exists it can be pretty slow at times. The #ltsp is the busy channel and you’ll find lots of edubuntu people there.
Best of luck and keep us up to date!
David G
Thanks for pointers. Although lockdown features are always available through dconf editor, it really helps to have more focused tools.
Ha! Cool, man! Maybe you could fix a lockdown bug in both Gnome-Shell and Ubuntu, then?
When I click “disable fast user switching” and locking, the buttons actually don’t disappear. They just stop working… That’s not all that nice, but good that they work at least.
Thing is, we have several computers, and if someone doesn’t log out, it’s impossible to turn of the computer without being admin. So obviously the users just pull the cable or something like that. That breaks LibreOffice and Firefox very often leaves a lock file inside its profile…
So my lockdown is not really because of evil users, but to always make sure they actually log out, and not just lock the screen…
Good initiativ!! You got my support. Good luck in your efforts. I’m looking forward to seeing the result. It is much needed.