[RndTbl] limited Linux Desktop?

[John Lange]

The Linux Terminal Server Project was geared toward this, but it now
appears un-maintained since 2013, which is fine because it's not a download
but built into the distributions that support it.

http://www.ltsp.org/

Perhaps you are already aware/using it, but if not you might be able to get
some useful ideas.

Alternatively, you could spin a new virtual machine for each desktop which
is actually more typical way this is done these days. It requires more
resources, the trade off is better security, though they could still
navigate around the file system.

John

On Thu, Feb 2, 2017 at 5:24 PM, Trevor Cordes <trevor at tecnopolis.ca> wrote:

> 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.
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-- 
John Lange
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