From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jun 8 23:43:04 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3162F16A41B for ; Thu, 8 Jun 2006 23:43:04 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from tech.junk@verizon.net) Received: from vms042pub.verizon.net (vms042pub.verizon.net [206.46.252.42]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8FDA043D4C for ; Thu, 8 Jun 2006 23:43:03 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from tech.junk@verizon.net) Received: from [192.168.0.101] ([71.255.112.8]) by vms042.mailsrvcs.net (Sun Java System Messaging Server 6.2-4.02 (built Sep 9 2005)) with ESMTPA id <0J0K00C5TF7MWVF2@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> for freebsd-questions@freebsd.org; Thu, 08 Jun 2006 18:42:59 -0500 (CDT) Date: Thu, 08 Jun 2006 19:42:58 -0400 From: Sean In-reply-to: To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Message-id: <4488B602.2080605@verizon.net> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit References: User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.4 (Windows/20060516) Subject: Re: Configuring FreeBSD for use as an interactive kiosk X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: tech.junk@verizon.net List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 08 Jun 2006 23:43:04 -0000 Andy Reitz wrote: > On Thu, 8 Jun 2006 drseuk@droog.sdf-eu.org wrote: > >> Hi, >> >> I'm involved with a museum which has a standalone interactive kiosk. The >> system runs an Apache2 server with PHP and MySQL on Windows XP. The >> problem is that Windows XP keeps becoming corrupted as a result of the >> machine being switched on and off at random (by staff, kids etc.). >> >> Currently, the museum management is very open to switching to FreeBSD or >> similar - provided I can *completely* bulletproof the box against >> arbitrary power-cycling (I can't always be there to manually run fsck >> etc.). >> >> I'd welcome any advice and suggestions about how to do this. Currently the >> information on the system is updated in situ so the file systems can't >> be made read only (any ideas on how we could split the updating from the >> deployment welcome). We also need to find a way of turning firefox into a >> kiosk browser. > > Hi drseuk, > > Well, the best thing to do would be to make your kiosk machine totally > diskless: > > http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/network-diskless.html > > This would make the kiosk machine totally resilient to unexpected reboots. > > However, it sounds like you only have one machine, and you have to make > everything work there. In that case, you might be able to experiment with > making certain file systems read-only, and only making them RW when you > want to modify the system. > > It looks like some work has been done with getting Firefox to work in > kiosk mode, here is what Google turned up for me: > > http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS6013296355.html > > Good luck, > -Andy Reitz. > > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" > A local library I have done some work for has a device from http://www.centuriontech.com/products/centurionguard/ It basically is a hardware solution that no mater what the user thinks they are doing, they cannot write to the disk. Sean