Making X a kiosk

[VanWEric]

I little slideshow/webpage I'd like to have running on a display computer continuosly. In one user's .xinitrc I have it pop mozilla and have fun. all other users should be able to use the computer normally. The 'special' user's name is kiosk.

1) Can I disable the mouse for kiosk, but enable it for everyone else? Or is there something I can do in .xinitrc to move the mouse to a corner?

2) I want kiosk to log in and startx automajically at boot. However, you should be able to ctrl-alt-backspace out to his terminal, or ctrl-alt-fN to a different term. I don't want other users to have to be in X, but they should be able to. I had it working with one display manager, but it started gnome for the other users.

3) Why does my screen black out sometimes? If the page doesn't refresh for a while, everything goes black. Not good when somepages may be rather long movies.
Gnome has xscreensaver, but kiosk never explicitly starts it, and xscreensaver is prettier than blank screen.

Thanks in advance.

Eric

Oh btw: mplayerplug-in is amazing, as is python.
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[br0mGreV]

which version of X do you use ?
Xfree or X.org ?


Every question you ask are solvable, but i have to make some tests before posting a correct answer (no gentoo at hand to test while at work) but i think all goes around the XF86Config file:

I think you can use a personnal .Xf86Config, on the ~kiosk with the flags :

[quote="Xf86Config man pages"]

• Option "DontVTSwitch" "boolean"
  This disallows the use of the Ctrl+Alt+Fn sequence (where Fn refers to one of the numbered function keys). That sequence is normally used to switch to another oqvirtual terminal)cq on operating systems that have this feature. When this option is enabled, that key sequence has no special meaning and is passed to clients. Default: off.
  
• Option "DontZap" "boolean"
  This disallows the use of the Ctrl+Alt+Backspace sequence. That sequence is normally used to terminate the X server. When this option is enabled, that key sequence has no special meaning and is passed to clients. Default: off.
  
• Option "DontZoom" "boolean"
  This disallows the use of the Ctrl+Alt+Keypad-Plus and Ctrl+Alt+Keypad-Minus sequences. These sequences allows you to switch between video modes. When this option is enabled, those key sequences have no special meaning and are passed to clients. Default: off.
  
• Option "AllowMouseOpenFail" "boolean"
  This allows the server to start up even if the mouse device can't be opened/initialised. Default: false.
  
• Option "BlankTime" "time"
  sets the inactivity timeout for the blanking phase of the screensaver. time is in minutes. This is equivalent to the Xserver's `-s' flag, and the value can be changed at run-time with xset(1) . Default: 10 minutes.
  

So here I think you can proceed :

Copy/paste your /etc/X11/Xf86Config file to the ~/.Xf86Config file

Remove the mouse input device and add the differents options just exposed in the ~/.Xf86Config.

Add to the .bashrc a startx -- -xf86config .Xf86Config

and change the default owner of the files so that the users can't change it.

and you have your mouse disactivated with no blank screen file.

see man XF86Config and man startx for more info.
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[georwell]

you might want to checkout kde's kiosk tool.

[VanWEric]

Thanks, I got it working. Instead of hiding the cursor, i ended up using xwarppointer.

Is there really nothing in the portage tree that allows you to control the mouse from the command line?

Oh, a list of what I ended up doing:
in xorg.conf

[Shaman]

[br0mGreV]

KDE Kiosk is a mode of KDE.

check this link for more info.

you can find an extra tool KIOSK admin tool here.

Since i'm not using KDE, i can't tell if this tool is aviable in portage, maybe in the admin packages. try by yourself.
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