restricting Firefox to a group
 

In Kubuntu -- How do I attach a group I have made to the Firefox application? I need to give access to Firefox to just three users.

Where is the actual Firefox application located? I have seen all the CLI stuff for groups and I understand that; I can't seem to figure out the directory location for the application.

Sorry for such a basic question, but I am rusty ...

thx

locaton of firefox
 

Try /usr/bin.
I'm not running Kubuntu (anymore) but Mepis is pretty close and that's where it is on mine....

To find out the location of an executable, you do something like
Some distros name firefox "mozilla-firefox", so try that if the above does not work.

The app seems to be in /usr/bin/firefox

But now I'm getting this :

synergy@KLDT:~$ chgrp firefox /usr/bin/firefox
chgrp: changing group of `/usr/bin/firefox': Operation not permitted

This is the admin account I'm using; I have forgotten if it's the same as root on other distros...

admin account
 

If memory serves, the Ubuntus all restrict root logins by default.
Have you tried
BTW, I don't know what you have in mind for a group name, but unless you are changing (application) firefox to group firefox, the chgrp command you show doesn't seem to makes sense to me.
But then a lot of things about life don't make sense to me....;-)

try "sudo chgrp firefox /usr/bin/firefox" and you'll be asked for your password. In Ubuntu and derivatives you down have an su command to change to super user. In this case there isn't a root login and password. If you're a member of the admin group you preceed command lines with sudo if the permissions are root.

Tried the following but seems same as before:

synergy@KLDT:~$ sudo chmod 770 /usr/bin/firefox
Password:
synergy@KLDT:~$ sudo chgrp firefox /usr/bin/firefox
synergy@KLDT:~$ ls -l /usr/bin/firefox
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 22 2007-01-06 14:40 /usr/bin/firefox -> ../lib/firefox/firefox

It's got to be something I'm doing, but I can't imagine what it is ... Any thoughts?

thx

It seems like /usr/bin/firefox is just a symlink to /usr/lib/firefox/firefox. Check the permissions and ownership for /usr/lib/firefox/firefox.

Yup...
 

I think you're right. On my MEPIS system anyway, ls -l shows it to be a symlink. Never noticed that before...

Here's how I did it, your instructions may vary slightly with Kubuntu/KDE(I did it with Ubuntu and Gnome)... I really wasn't sure how to do this, so I created a dummy account and completed the process. If you already have the accounts set up, you'd probably only need to modify those accounts, as opposed to create a new account.

Just to be safe, any changes you make, note them, so if something goes haywire, you can go back and change them back to their original settings, but I had no noticeable problems.

Open a terminal
sudo nautilus
passwd
navigate to usr/bin
right click the Firefox link, choose Properties
Permissions(here's what mine looks like)
owner- root -Read/write
group indygunfreak(more or less my admin group)-read only
others none
Accept any changes...

System>Admin>Users and Groups

Create your account(or if it already exists, highlight, click Properties)
Click the User Privileges tab- make sure Administer the System is unchecked
Advanced Tab- Group(for me) is Users

Accept all your changes.

Log out and back in to one of the restricted accounts, and see if it worked. Note, this only restricted access to Firefox, Opera and Konq(the other two browsers on my sistem), still worked w/o issue.

Anyone with more experience than I, with a comment/concern? This seems to have done the trick.

IGF

Thanks to all for the help ... it works. I got it restricted for use by those in the group. The symlink comment was dead-on --- I was working on a link, not the real app. And thanks to IndyGF for working thru it !

have a great week ## rasta