[EdLUG] Locking down Ubuntu 14.04

[Edinburgh Linux Users Group]

Here's how I understand the reasoning:

The shelter does not want residents saving files to the hard drive ;
specifically, they want to make sure the residents are actively pushed by
the system towards their pen drives

I assume the computers are going to be available in the shelter as
stationary workstations - not for roaming around with.

*Id est*: The requirement of not being able to write to disk is not so much
a security requirement, but rather to ensure residents are saving their
personal documents to the right place - is this correct?



Given these goals, perhaps the easiest solution would be to create a
non-admin user for residents to log in as.
Then, using super user, remove the write permissions on the home directory
(make it non-writable), and change its owner and group to root (make it so
the user can't turn write-ability back on)

adduser user
chmod -R 555 /home/user
chmod -R root:rrot /home/user

Thus they won't be able to write into the downloads or documents folders
etc, but a mounted flash drive would work fine.

Tai



===
Tai Kedzierski

Affordable Office IT for Freelance and Startup Businesses
http://helpuse.com/

  I use www.libreoffice.org

*"Open Source Free Software is a matter of liberty, not price."*
http://bit.ly/foss-why-care


On 30 September 2015 at 07:12, Edinburgh Linux Users Group <
edlug at lists.edlug.org.uk> wrote:

> Hi, thanks for this suggestion.  More questions in line...
>
> On Tue, Sep 29, 2015 at 11:03 PM, Edinburgh Linux Users Group <
> edlug at lists.edlug.org.uk> wrote:
>
>> You could use a live CD image on the hard drive, a quick look gave me
>> knoppix
>> which at first glance does not install,  or set the hard drive to read
>> only.
>>
>
> Sorry, I didn't understand this suggestion.  I know what a live CD is, but
> I don't know how to "use a live CD image on the hard drive."  Before you
> explain, I should probably tell you that this system has only 2 GB of RAM,
> and so we need to be sparing of impact on RAM, as we are using Ubuntu
> 14.04, which really does need 2 GB of RAM as a minimum.
>
>
>>
>> Alternatively run without a drive and have a USB drive mounted internally
>> with a
>> live distro.
>>
>
> That is interesting, but again, it sounds like you are recommending using
> a live CD, which is difficult, given our RAM limitations.
>
> thanks everyone for your thoughts.  I am open to other suggestions.
>
>
>>
>> Joe.
>>
>> > On 30 September 2015 at 01:50 Edinburgh Linux Users Group
>> > <edlug at lists.edlug.org.uk> wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> > Hi,
>> >
>> > I am donating two Ubuntu 14.04 machines to a homeless shelter.  The
>> shelter
>> > would like to prevent the residents from writing any documents to the
>> hard
>> > drive.  The shelter wants to have residents download stuff to flash
>> drives
>> > they are giving the residents.  Googling, I find nothing directly on
>> > point.  Any help is welcome.
>> >
>> > I did find this
>> >
>> > http://forums.linuxvoice.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=147
>> >
>> > Which talks about locking down the user settings, but it does not
>> prevent
>> > writing to the hard drive.
>> > <https://lists.edlug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/edlug>
>>
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