Re: securing desktop

[Mark Grieveson <dg135@torfree.net>]

> > permissions on the home directory (ie, making the /home/guest
> > directory inaccessible, making booting into that user on the
> > computer impossible  

> How is this possibel?
> You can not change the permission of ${HOME} if you are NOT root.

The owner of /home/guest is guest, who, in my experience, can change
its permissions.  This only happened once; so, it's not my biggest
worry. The client messing up the panels, and screwing around with the
desktop, are the biggest causes of concern.

> Write a script which is executed after logout.
> This script should:

>     1)  rm -rf /home/guest
>     2)  tar -xzf home_guest.tar.gz

> and you are done.  The archive home_guest.tar.gz should
> be the configured /home/guest directory which will be
> restored after each logout.

> Thanks, Greetings and nice Day
>     Michelle Konzack

Thanks for your script suggestion.  For now, I've set it up with
gconf-editor to lock the panels, and I've removed various system
entries from the menu, and I set root as the owner
of /usr/guest/Desktop.  This is not totally secure, but I think it
creates enough hurdles to prevent vandalism of the desktop for now.

Mark