projects

Projects I'm involved in.

New Ubuntu Kiosk image for 12.04

We have just finished a release for Ubuntu 12.04. It can be downloaded using the link below.

Installation is the same:

1). Boot to the image (CD or USB). 
2). Log in as itadmin with the password changeme
3). Double click "install custom CD" on the desktop. 
4). Reboot to the hard disk and log in again. 
5). Double click setup kiosk and choose run in terminal. 

Ubuntu kiosk based on 10.04.1

**The latest update broke the kioskfox plugin** See here for instructions on fixing it.

The links for the new build based on Ubuntu 10.04.1 are below, along with the zip file containing the scripts. Contributions are welcome and please contact me or comment below with questions and complaints. This is live CD that can be installed to disk that is tailored for use as a public internet kiosk. There are 19 scripts included that perform various actions.

This started several years ago after a need arose for secure and stable web kiosks around our college campus.

Ubuntu kiosk based on 9.10

Updated 05/24/2011: Click here for the newest kiosk build based on Ubuntu 10.04.1.

Below is a the link for a kiosk build of Ubuntu based on 9.10. This build is a specific configuration of Ubuntu that will automatically login as a kiosk user. The kiosk user's xsession consists only of a single Firefox Window.

Be sure to see the FAQ at the bottom.

Bash script to measure bandwidth

I wrote a bash script to measure the amount of bandwidth, and to count the number of connections to the server, and used cron to run it once an hour. The results are written to a log. It works nicely, although I'm guessing my math is off a bit in calculating the bandwidth.

This was made to keep an eye on our web cam at my place of employment. It measures the bandwidth over 30 seconds during the run.


#!/bin/bash

CONN=`netstat -nt | awk '{ print $5}' | cut -d: -f1 | sed -e '/^$/d' | sort -n | uniq | wc -l`
DATE=`date '+%D | %r'`

Ubuntu kiosk edition v1.0

Updated 05/24/2011: Click here for the newest kiosk build based on Ubuntu 10.04.1.

Updated 04/08/2010: I have posted the new version of a kiosk build based on Ubuntu 9.10 here.

Updated 03/16/2010: I am working on a kiosk build using 9.10. This should be posted soon.

One of my projects at my current employer was to use Ubuntu as a public kiosk after our Windows kiosks started prompting users for credit card information. After building the image up on a test machine, I used the excellent remastersys project to build an image to use for future maintenance. I am making this image available here.

This is a live CD that is currently built on Ubuntu 8.04.1 LTS and has most of the extra software removed, such as the games and unnecessary utilities, and is suitable for both wired and wireless kiosks. Please read on for notes and implementation.

Script to create bridged networking for VirtualBox

Attached is a script that I've created to create and configure a network bridge and TAP interface.

Because VirtualBox requires these steps every boot, I figured I'd make it easy. Plus, using a static IP requires slightly more work. This script should make it easier.

Run the script as root (or with sudo) and it will ask you some questions, defaulting with some auto detected answers.

Section: 

This theme is available (Drupal 5.x)

This Drupal 5.x theme is available for download here. There's not a whole lot to it, but it is XHTML compatible, search engine friendly and looks good across browsers (a little fuzzy in IE 6, but what isn't). If anyone has any corrections, or improvements, let me know.

v1.1 - A couple of small fixes.

v1.2 - Added node.tpl.php to fix the validation when taxonomy terms are enabled. The default node template used span tags to wrap the unordered lists, which fails validation. I changed them to div tags.