Hi all!

I've been given the task to look into setting up a work environment where the user basically has no acces to anything, he should only see a pre-set background, and use the programs started by a remote admin.

The important thing is, the user shouldn't be able to:

• start a new application
• close an application
• get acces to a console

The user should still be able to resize/move a window, and pressing the "Print" key should open the "Hardcopy printing tool".

After looking around on the internet I realized that this could be easily done by making use of the kiosk framework in kde, but I'm having problems with it.

First I tried just limiting one user's access, by editing the /home/<user>/.kde4/share/config/kdeglobals file, and adding the following part:

Code: Select all

[KDE Action Restrictions][$i]
run_command=false

Which works ok, the user won't be able to use the Alt + F2 key combination, or the "Run Command" menu item.

However, most of the other keys doesn't seem to be working at all after setting them to false (the functions can still be used by the user), and there would be quite a few actions that should be restricted to achieve the original description (for example: logout, screen_lock, action/file_exit, action/file_open, etc).

My question is: is kiosk working properly in the latest KDE versions? If yes, what could it be that I'm doing wrong?

Note, that my task includes exploring the possibility of setting up such a terminal using several different window managers, and just using another one instead of KDE isn't a perfect solution - I would need confirmation that it is indeed not possible to achieve this by using KDE, if this is the case.

Which version of KDE are you using? Kiosk was worked on most in the KDE 3.x series, and will work best there. In regards to KDE 4, it is probably best to use 4.6 or later, especially versions before KDE 4.5 did not do a very good job of obeying Kiosk restrictions.

I've tried it with KDE 4.4.4, and on another platform with KDE 4.3.1.

I'll try upgrading to 4.6 and see what happens...

I tested locking down the same actions on KDE 4.6, without much success. Some of them are working only partially, or not at all.

For example: disabling the action file_exit will remove the "Quit" menu item from only a few applications, and it is still possible to quit those applications by using the "X" button in the top right corner of the window. Disabling "lock_screen" or "logout" has no effect.

Which applications in particular are not obeying the Kiosk restrictions? They may have bugs in them which are stopping the Kiosk restrictions from being automatically applied.

Regarding the action/file_quit, file_exit restrictions

Some applications where quit was still available in the menu:
Firefox, LibreOffice

Some applications where quit wasn't in the menu, but the application can be closed with the X in the top right corner of the window (I expected that restricting file_quit and _exit actions would disable this as well):
Dolphin file manager, Amarok audio player, Help (KDE help center)

Ok, Firefox and Libreoffice are not KDE applications, so they will not be affected by restrictions put in place through the KDE Kiosk system unfortunately.

For Dolphin, Amarok and Help, it might be best to send an email to kde-devel about this, as it probably needs a discussion on the merits of restricting such an action before being implemented in kdelibs (which the three above apps all use)

you need to write:

action/logout=false
or
action/lock_screen=false

the kiosk system seems to be a complete mess and the techbase article either.. i managed to setup a save and solid kiosk but it needed some tricks and A LOT of trial and error...

some of the options just don't work

run_command=false will disable krunner but the menu entry will be still there.. you have to write
action/run_command to remove the menu (if you just use the actin/runcommand setting you'll still be able to use the alt-f2 shortcut so you need both of them

For issues such as this one where keys appear to be duplicated, I would suggest filing bug reports as the very similar nature of the names indicates that this is likely unintended and a bug.