Need to implement a cybercafe monitoring solution for monitoring users session times log in/log out session expiry etc., on redhat 7.3 network.

I have heard of Linux Terminal Services Project (LTSP) which configures a thin client model network, but I would still need a centralized administration interface that can be maintained by anon-computer literate person.

What would be an efficient & viable way to implement this, i.e. what network files could I manipulate to do this without affecting the whole network?

I thought about systematically updating the dhcp.conf file, i.e. changing lease times on clients - is this viable?

Or could I use samba authentication?

Or systematically updating iptables?

Would welcome any thoughts or ideas as a starting point.

Gidday mate,

and the probably easiest to achieve method
would be to use a hardware device with a
timer (like a parking meter) that simply disconnects
the UTP-Cable :}

You'd want the boxes physically shielded,
anyway, put in some sort of closet, so it would
be safe from physical tampering, too.


Another possibility would be to set up PAM
and have a database of temporary user-id's
and passwords, and have some sort of demon
on the linux - surf - machine running that just shuts
ports that aren't needed for maintenance (all
but 5432 if it were a PostgreSQL solution)after
the time has expired.

Cheers,
Tink

Thanks mate, like the pam idea - what sort of daemon could be used for shuting down ports?

- good to know that there are other kiwis out there that also 'brake for penguines' :-)

/me chuckles

Got that wrong mate, we accelerate with penguin-power ;)

Didn't spend too much time thinking about it ... the fastest
way I can think of (least effort) would be a shell-script
that is called by cron on a per-minute basis, does a
ps -A u, gather user's processes that match the naming
conventions of your temporary names, generate a tmp-file
with the users name (so it doesn't get triggered twice),
spawn a new process, set a sleep for the amount of time
that you setup in the database for that particular user,
after that ran out delete the user from the database, and
lock the screen :) or run another script that modifies iptables
so it only allows port 5432 queries ;)

The disadvantage of this solution is that user can't top-up
his time easily (could be changed easily enough, though,
just make the spawned job query the database in intervals
to see whether the time has changed)

Cheers,
Tink

p.s.: there's a bunch of solutions out there already ;)
http://freshmeat.net/search/?q=inter...ction=projects