Hi, I'm very new using linux
and want to limit program usage.
I don't want my bro and his friend
to play bzflag all day and night long.

I've searched online, and found something about disk quotas,
but i don't want to limit their disk usage, just internet time or game time.

any ideas how? please be very specific, i don't know too much about linux yet.

Hi, and welcome to LQ.

Have a look at
man logoutd
man porttime
for time-restrictions ...

If you don't want them to use one
program all day you'd have to change the
permissions on that file from a cron-job.



Cheers,
Tink

hi,

i tried typing man porttime and man logoutd in the konsole, but my manual doesn't have entries for those... I can guess that logoutd may automatically log out a user on a set time,, but how to do this? is there a gui or can someone show me step by step the command line entries to accomplish this?

i do have webmin, and was looking at the cron-jobs thing there. It looks as if a cron job lets you start or execute a command at a specific time. however i don't see where to stop or halt a program after lets say 30 mins of use per day.

if cron job is the way to go, can someone tell me step by step how to create a new cron job to shut off a program after a said time. (letting a user turn on a program and use it within a set period of time is acceptable. for example, if the user wanted to play bz flag from 6-7pm he could launch it, but then after 7 it turns off. I don't want bz flag to automatically start at 6 though)

thanks!

you have to install a program or utility to get its manpage (or you can probably find it on the internet with google). I would also recommend looking into kernel patches such as grsecurity which has an amazing ACL (access control list) which can limit processes used, limit access to certain processes, limit access time etc. The sky is the limit.

This task is not a simple point and click task to accomplish so you will probably have to read quite a few lines ofman pages, online how-to docs and be prepared for some frustration before you get it working.