Super noob here, trying to build a Kiosk PC

[atredes]

Hello, everyone, I am trying to get started with Linux and this seemed like a good place to get some help without being ridiculed haha.

I actually have never used linux before, so I am a super noob, but I have been reading about it and it is definitely something I want to get into.

 

 

My supervisor at work wants to set up a kiosk PC for visitors to use here at our office. After reading about all the options it seems a Linux based kiosk would best suit our needs, but I have no idea to go about setting it up. I was reading about it on this site: http://kiosk.mozdev.org/ but I got a little overwhelmed trying to research everything. I would be extremely grateful if someone could point me to some noob friendly documentation on getting started on Linux. Thanks and I appreciate your time.

[Dungeon-Dave]

What do you want the kiosk PC to actually do? By the looks of that link, it seems you're after a browser for a desktop - is that it?

 

(if so, you may want to look at Chromium - Google's "Linux-based browser desktop")

[atredes]

Yeah we only want it to be able to browse the web, and that's it. I got Chromium installed, works great. Now is there a way to lock down the OS so Chromium is the only thing people can access? I am doing this all in Oracle VM before I put it on the PC btw.

[Dungeon-Dave]

If you boot Chromium from a mobile device (USB pen, etc) there's a facility to install it as an OS to a PC, so it becomes the base OS.

 

In terms of only accessing the browser part - the underlying shell/OS should be configurable to add/remove components, but how it's done I've no idea. The Chromium or GoogleOS forums ought to shed more light on that front.

 

What other Kiosk-based distros have you looked at? I came across these links:

http://www.ehartwell.com/InfoDabble/HowT..._and_Linux

http://www.internetling.com/2008/04/19/t...tribution/

http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Linux_Kiosk

 

I don't know if we're going to be much help selecting a distro or advising you how to go about it - but if you land upon a distro of choice and find some instructions on setting up, this is the place to guide you through file changes, services configuration and other underlying OS tweaks.

 

Or in layman's terms: the other sites should tell you *what* to do, we'll guide you through *how* to actually do it!

[hybrid]

I seem to remember having a kiosk-mode thing working a while ago, but it was with this Kiosk tool in KDE 3.x. There are, unfortunately, few Linux distributions that now use KDE 3.x. [img]<___base_url___>//public/style_emoticons/default/sad.png[/img] I seem to also remember an article in the Linux Format magazine about making a kiosk system. Unfortunately, it's a paper magazine, I don't know if I still have it and its analogue nature means I can't search for it with any speed! [img]<___base_url___>//public/style_emoticons/default/sad.png[/img]

 

It might be possible to get KDE 3.5 somehow and set this up.

 

Might I also suggest taking a look at xPUD? It is a lightweight distribution built around Firefox that might work for you. You'd just download it, burn it to a CD, then boot the public access computer from CD. Once you 'maximise' Firefox, it would work quite well as a kiosk. Since a sufficiently skilled user can get to a terminal, it's not perfect, but it might be a starting point for further research.

 

Here is what xPUD looks like once Firefox is maximised:

 

[atredes]

After a lot of research I found one I really like, http://webconverger.com/. I got it running in Mint by mounting the ISO as a virtual CD drive. It works, but for various reasons, I need to install it to the hard drive of the PC that will be used as a kiosk. I cam across this page http://webconverger.org/usb/ but I am a bit confused by the directions. I would be very appreciative if anyone could walk me through the steps. You guys have been awesome so far, my first foray into the world of Linux has been confusing but pretty fun actually. I really do appreciate your time, thanks and I look forward to hearing from you. :)

[hybrid]

You guys have been awesome so far, my first foray into the world of Linux has been confusing but pretty fun actually. I really do appreciate your time, thanks and I look forward to hearing from you.

 

That is really great to hear and thanks for the feedback. Many people's first experiences with Linux and confusing and, perhaps, a little overwhelming, but over time they grow to love the challenge. We really appreciate you taking the time to let us know that you've found the site helpful and are enjoying Linux! [img]<___base_url___>//public/style_emoticons/default/biggrin.png[/img]

 

I need to install it to the hard drive of the PC that will be used as a kiosk. I cam across this page http://webconverger.org/usb/ but I am a bit confused by the directions. I would be very appreciative if anyone could walk me through the steps.

 

I've run through the process myself in a virtual machine, and I think I've got it working. Here is what you need to do.

 

Please bear in mind that this process will delete anything on the first hard drive of the computer you run it on and replace it with WebConverger. Be sure you're doing it on the target computer and that anything you want saved from that machine is backed up! Again, everything will be deleted.

 

Put in your WebConverger CD and start the target machine from it. When you see the first boot screen, press the Tab key to edit the boot settings. We'll only need to do this one time, to copy the CD to the hard drive. You'll see a long line of text, which is unfortunately a little difficult to read, due to white on white!

 

Erase everything to the right of the word 'noroot' with backspace. So, leave 'nomodeset' as the last bit of the line for now. (You'll notice that each time you hit backspace, the line reprints itself. Gah, it's ugly, but stick with it [img]<___base_url___>//public/style_emoticons/default/tongue.png[/img] )

 

Type, leaving a space after 'nomodeset', the following:

 

username=root splash vga=current quiet

 

Here, we are asking the CD to boot into effectively the 'administrator mode' of WebConverger, so we can copy it to the hard drive. The bottom line of the command should now read:

 

nomodeset username=root splash vga=current quiet

 

Press Enter and wait a few moments for the system to boot. You should see a black screen with a grey line at the top, and 'dwm-5.8.2' written in the top right.

 

Press Alt-Shift-Enter, which will bring up a terminal.

 

Carefully type the following command, which will copy the CD to the hard drive. Again, this deletes everything on the first hard drive of the computer. Press Enter when you have typed it out, then expect it to take quite a bit of time before it appears to have done anything (it is copying all 320 MB of the CD to the hard drive).

 

Code:

dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/dev/sda bs=512

 

Once you see a notice about how much data has been copied, it is done. Now, we just type:

 

Code:

reboot

 

You can remove the CD as the system comes back up and it should boot from the hard drive! Done!

[atredes]

Hybrid I can't thank you enough man. That worked like a charm. The only thing I am having trouble with is that it wont save the homepage I want. During boot I hit TAB to get to that awful white on white screen, hit the back arrow until I get to the homepage line and change it to the one I want. It then loads up with the correct homepage but does not save the settings when rebooted. Also, the PC this is going on uses a wireless connection, do you think there will be any issues with the driver for the wifi card? Thanks again for making everything easy to understand.

[hybrid]

In order to make any permanent customisations with this particular software, it is unfortunately necessary to rebuild the CD image with the tweaks, then burn a new CD and run the install to hard drive process again.

 

Their instructions for this are here, under 'Hacking the USB boot', but perhaps we can help with their instructions for that process too.* What would the desired homepage be? If this machine uses the wireless networking, what is the network name to connect to? These things would both need to be added to the custom image so that each time it boots it remembers the settings.

 

As far as wireless card compatibility -- it often depends with Linux. My experience is that it is often binary: it will either work perfectly or it really won't, and will require a lot of fiddling. If you can try the full Debian distribution on the target machine and see if it auto-detects the wireless card, that should be a useful way to test this. If you can provide more information about this machine's hardware, (which wireless card is it?) that might also help determine whether or not it will work.

 

* The developers also have a paid customisation service which you might have seen. I don't want to disenfranchise the developers if you're able to support them!

[inittux]

You can check here first for debian support on wireless