How to make a Puppy Kiosk out of Lucid Puppy 5.2

[oldmac2006]

G'day Purjuju,
The Puppy Universal Installer is on a normal Puppy 5.2 CD
Are you using Puppy in a Kiosk ??
If not then you can download a full Puppy 5.2.5 and then using the Puppy Universal Installer load it onto a HDD. The installer is on the Start menu under Setup. There are good prompts and instructions when doing it.
If using in Kiosk then load the Puppy Kiosk Setup 5.2 CD follow the instructions about remastering the Puppy Kiosk ...then remaster the Puppy to an ISO file. I loaded my ISO with the remaster files onto a USB Flash drive and then after which used the Universal Installer to create a CD and load onto a HDD. I wanted to try all options. Hope this helps.
Cheers
Mac

[shadower_sc]

Hi purjuju. This is how to start the Puppy Universal Installer.

Boot the Puppy Kiosk CD.

Click on the Menu and select RXVT Terminal Emulator.
Type "/usr/sbin/puppyinstaller".

That will start the Puppy Universal Installer.

Install to your HDD. Good to go.

I have not uninstalled or removed any programs from the original disks. All I have done is lock the user out of Puppy.

The same edits can be made to a HDD install, but I have found that a CD install is the best for my scenario. I have tried installing to the Hard Drive, but I have to be at each machine to make my changes and it tends to get complicated. With a Remastered CD I make my life simpler as I reduce the amount of time I am sitting at each different Kiosk Machine.

As a side note, if you have a PUPSAVE file your changes should save. All I have done with my Puppy Kiosk is prevent it from creating the PUPSAVE file where one does not exist.

Glad you found Puppy Kiosk useful oldmac2006.

[purjuju]

Hello guys !!!

Thank you for your support, I'm going to apply your advices !

Last question: do you know how to configure automatic boot with grub or another one? then the users doesn't need to press enter or doesn't have access to grub menu.

Thx for your help!

J

[muggins]

If you open /boot/grub/menu.lst, in a text editor, and alter the timeout line to:

Code: Select all

timeout 0

then the default will boot automatically.

[purjuju]

Thank you Muggins for your answer !

But before that, I don't find how to run GRUBCONFIG.

I've tried a command line grub-install.. but even with google, I'm not able to make it !

Sorry guys, I'm a beginner...

Thanks for your help !

[purjuju]

Never mind, I found it.
It's
/usr/sbin/grubconfig

I found it by using ps command in console of the full puppy linux live cd.
I compare the ps list before starting grubconfig and during grubconfig runs.

I hope this can help for others beginners...

[purjuju]

Hi all !

I've almost finish my kiosk !

I just need to know how to hide icons close to the clock (interfaces, volume, storage..) thank you very much for your help

[shadower_sc]

That is the JWM Tray and I posted earlier on how to edit the tray. Below is the quote from that post.
-Joe-

Customize the Menu

...

Step #2 Edit the JWM Tray
Edit the file "/root/.jwmrc-tray".
Comment out any elements you do not want listed in the taskbar. Make sure you do not Comment out the Menu. Theoretically you may be able to comment the whole thing out and just rely on the right-click menu to manage your Kiosk. Down sides to that would be that you would give up the ability to see at a glance, if the network is down or even just looking at the time.

...

[purjuju]

Hey shadower,

Indeed, I've already fallow this step and I could hide the desktop shortcut and the clock but I don't know which line I have to comment to hide interfaces, volume and storage icons


Thanks for your help

[shadower_sc]

Edit the file "/root/.jwmrc-tray".
Comment out any elements you do not want listed in the taskbar. Make sure you do not Comment out the Menu.

Comment out the <Dock/> line to remove the Volume and other icons from the JWM Tray.

Comment out the <Swallow ...> to </Swallow> to remove the xload / CPU monitoring icon from the JWM Tray.

Comment out the <Pager/> line to remove the Desktop switcher from the JWM Tray.

Trial and error are your friends. Most everything I do is poke this and see what that does. I do make some educated guesses and don't mess with things at random, but most problems can be solved by trial and error.

Good Luck!

[jaspmatt]

I'm probably missing something in these instructions but I do not understand how to password protect items in the right-click desktop menu that should not have user access.
My menu now looks like this:

Firefox web browser
Urxvt terminal emulator
NicoEdit text editor
Remaster Puppy live-CD
<separator>
Shutdown

How do I prevent users from selecting anything except Firefox and shutdown?

[shadower_sc]

Hi jaspmatt,

The short answer is that you need to only have Firefox and Shutdown in your menu. That will keep anyone (Including You) from having access to the other programs.

The Long answer is located here: Kiosk Setup Final Touches.doc

Look for the section "Finish editing the /tmp/root/.jwmrc menu:".

Let me know, if you need further guidance.

Sincerely,
-Joe-

[shadower_sc]

Hello again.

This update is a suggestion for those that do not want to update Firefox until there is a non experimental version of ProCon Latte to go along with it.

Disable the Updates to Firefox.

Open the Tools Menu and select Options. This brings up the options menu. Click on the Advanced option. Then click on the Update tab in the Advanced section. Disable the Firefox updates by removing the check mark next to Firefox. You can also disable the Automatic Updates to the Add-ons and Search Engines here as well.

[jaspmatt]

Hello shadower,

I have a remastered Puppy CD/iso with only those things in the menu from my post above.
How do I install it on my /dev/sda4 partition so that it takes the place of the full 5.2 installation that is there now? I don't want to have to boot from USB or CD. Thanks.

[shadower_sc]

...

This is how to start the Puppy Universal Installer.

Boot the Puppy Kiosk CD.

Click on the Menu and select RXVT Terminal Emulator.
Type "/usr/sbin/puppyinstaller".

That will start the Puppy Universal Installer.

Install to your HDD. Good to go.

I have not uninstalled or removed any programs from the original disk.

...

As a side note, if you have a PUPSAVE file your changes should save. All I have done with my Puppy Kiosk is prevent it from creating the PUPSAVE file where one does not exist.

...

There are some tutorials on the forum that show how to install Puppy Linux to the HDD. Search in this forum for "How to install Puppy Linux to the Hard Drive" or something like that, if you need a step by step tutorial on how to do a normal Puppy Linux install to the HDD (Hard Disk Drive).

[oldmac2006]

I created a new Kiosk look and then went to remaster puppy live CD to create an ISO image, saving the files onto a Flash Drive, it created the PuppyLiveCDBuild folder, but no ISO image. So I created an ISO image from those files in the PuppyLiveCDBuild folder using ISO Master, my issue is that when I burn that ISO to a CD the CD will not then boot, says insert proper boot media. My question is: Can I build an ISO from just those files in the PuppyLiveCDBuild folder? or do I need to put some other file in there as well? I looked at what files where on the Original create a Kiosk ISO from here, the only file missing from my ISO in comparison was a boot.cat file, so I added that to another ISO and burnt it, this one said: "could not find Linux". Assume boot.cat points to a Linux kernel?
On the Flash drive outside of the PuppyLiveCDBuild folder are 2 other files called : ldlinux.sys and Lupu_520.sfs. Should I add these?
I did not want to have to start from scratch again but it would be good to know if this can be done and add it to my knowledge base
Many thanks
Cheers
Mac

[shadower_sc]

Hi MAC,

In theory the PuppyLiveCDBuild folder is the folder that all the files are temporarily saved to before creating the ISO. I have not tested creating an ISO from the folder, but you should be able to. I will put this on my to do list, but as it isn't something I need to do it may be a while. I would like to know the how of this as much as you, but I am running crazy at work right now.

Sincerely,
-Joe-

P.S.
I did a search of the forums and didn't come up with anything beyond the fact that some people have had similar issues before. I would guess that you did not have enough space on the flash drive to create the ISO file or you chose no when it asked you, if you wanted to create an ISO.

[oldmac2006]

G'day Joe,

I thought (Dementia) I had clicked yes to create an ISO, but when I took the USB out ... there was not one there. So that's when I thought I would create one from the Folder
I have since redone the setup I wanted and created an ISO when prompted ..it worked OK and all is good. So knowing if it works from the folder is not important.

I have managed to get a public Internet kiosk with just Firefox with no options and no menu bar, Caption or title bar. I found the right click on the Firefox symbol gave users the ability to stuff with the settings(Remember I prefer to run from Hard Drive instead of CD). Hiding the Caption/Title bar fixed that.

I would like to know how to stop the 2nd desktop being available?

Cheers
Mark

[shadower_sc]

Hi Mark,

To disable the Virtual Desktops choose 1 as the number of Virtual Desktops.

Start the JWM Configuration tool.
Click on Tray Management.
Click on Virtual Desktops.
Enter 1 in the Textbox.
Done.

I banged my head against the wall far too long on this one. Luckily I found this tutorial that was of help: http://puppy.b0x.me/wiki/doku.php?id=jwm.

-Joe-

[oldmac2006]

G'day Joe,
Thanks heaps ... that was a real concern for me. There are a couple of other options there that I was wondering about also.Now I know that too.
Easy when you look
Cheers
Mac