[RndTbl] limited Linux Desktop?

[Trevor Cordes]

On 2017-02-02 Grigory Shamov wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> somehow locked to the particular users and perhaps even particular
> apps?

Particular users can probably be handled with custom pam
rules/settings.  Particular apps is much harder.  I think you'd need to
create an install (perhaps virtual) that just has the apps you want
those users to use.

> I.e., so that any Filemanager would stay under selected paths the
> user has access to?

That's chroot-y if you want the OS to only show the user what's
in /home/foo in a secure way.  However, there's no chroot method that
will lock them in one data path without requiring copies of the
relevant bins/libs/etc for the apps you want to run.  I don't even
think any of the recent developments like cgroups, docker, etc, can
help you here.

Even trying to hardlink everything into a chroot environment under the
user's home dir wouldn't work I don't think because of the complexity
of login managers, and X in general.

Now you might be able to find a file manager that can be set to limit
views to certain paths, but without something at the OS layer locking
things down they can always escape somehow if they know what they are
doing (or bring up a shell).

If I'm understanding what it is you're trying to do correctly, I'm
afraid there may be no solution.  However, if you perhaps redefine your
policy goals of what exactly you're trying to protect against, perhaps
you can achieve those goals without locking things down as drastically
as you think you need to.