HOWTO: Parental control. Now with GUI too!

[Kaobear]

Absolutely wonderful script, please check your PM's for a little note from me.

[nanomad]

I've read your PM and replied. Check it

[rayrayray]

FWIW - I've been battling to get DG working for several days for a project involving public access internet computers at a local library. A couple of days ago I got to the point that it would work IF I did the manual proxy configuration in the individual browsers, but no other way. On a whim, I did a fresh install of UBUNTU 5.10 to some spare space on my desktop to try that. Same result. So I upgraded it to 6.06 and did the reinstall (using the above supplied script) - this time it seems to work without any further fiddling. I need the installation to be easy to manage so that staff can shut down the filtering for adults who request it - looks like I may finally be able to get there. Anyone have a clue why it works on 6.06 but not on 5.10?

[eric.duveau]

I tested it and suprisingly I only can install from a console window. May because of my system?!

"configure the parental control filter" is the string put in the menu system.
Could you put something like "configure content filter" ou "configure content filtering engine" which is more acceptable for adult users

[kosmic]

Very good nanomad, 5 Stars for your work

[nanomad]

I'm integrating kaobear's suggestions + the one of the others. I should release a new package soon (if my ISP decides to give me a proper internet connection)

[richardun]

Thanks, nanomad. The gui is nice especially since I had zero experience with dansguardian and fireHOL and tinyproxy.

The only buttons that didn't work for me on the configure screen were in 'Configure Whitelist' >> Sites, Users, IPs not filtered.

I just edited the dansguardian files manually and had your gui save config changes.

Also, when I went to pick a language, I didn't see english (or ukenglish), so I picked the last one which had a radio button, but was blank... was hoping it was english. Then dansguardian didn't want to start (because the language var in dansguardian.conf was '(null)'... anyway, I changed it to ukenglish and it was good... just thought you might want to know about those things I encountered.

Thanks again!

[msak007]

Thanks for the script, this is exactly what I was looking for. I tried a how-to on another web site and was close, but gave up on trying to get dansguardian to connect to squid as a proxy (plus the GUI makes for easier configuration). Anyway just wanted to comment that I'm a Kubuntu user, and you hard-coded gnome-terminal in your installer script so it kept failing on the zenity check when it would call gnome-terminal. I ended up having to run .zenity_check and .setup manually to get this installed. My biggest problem, however, is that I couldn't edit any rules or configurations because, once again, you hard-coded gedit into your scripts. Just thought I'd let you know that you may want to do something about that because not all your users will be using Gnome. I'll have to find where the code is stored and edit it manually to use kedit or kate to edit config files. Also, I had the same problem as Richardun when picking a language and had to choose the blank radio button. Otherwise keep the great work, maybe you can work with the Automatix guys and get this included in their installer.

EDIT: Well as far as I can tell, everything is stored in /usr/local/parental-control but I couldn't find anything in any of the scripts there referencing gedit, so I assume it's coded in the "ubuntu_parental_control_gui" file which I can't edit (looks empty, not sure what kind of file that is). So at this point, this app is useless to me unless I install gedit which I don't want to do. Please advise me what I can do to have it use kedit or kate instead of gedit. Also, one thing I noticed is that when it blocks a page it gives the "Page cannot be displayed" error. Is there a way you can edit that to display an "Access denied" page instead?

[Macchi]

Thank you very much Nanomad for the script! I am experimenting with content filtering on a small office & home office server. My goal is to configure the server as a web proxy and filter for my network. Later I will have to find out how to add the automatic proxy configuration for the clients.

I would also like to request a name change towards the more neutral "content filter" or anything similar. The present name parental control" has a more limited scope.

There are many situations where content filtering is very important and necessary: Business and professional users, educational aplications, public environments and of course for families.

[iperkins]

Is it possible to set up some really primitive parental controls using, let's say, only iptables? Like some rule to block every destination but allow only some websites (or ips for that matter).

This is what I am looking for as well. Which takes precedence, deny or allow? Ideally (IMHO) if allow takes precedence, deny everything and only allow what you want. This is for my son, who turs 6 on Friday. [edit] I also want to extend my thanks. Now my kids can start learning Ubuntu!