Comments on: Parental Controls in a Lab Setting w/ OS X 10.5.1 Leopard

By: Greg

Greg — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 19:31:37 +0000

This might be a few weeks late - but Try deep freeze & another product they have called Anti-executable. Even if the change the dock and change the passwords all day - the reset of the machines will reset all the changes.

By: Steve Giessler

Steve Giessler — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 16:04:10 +0000

I forgot to mention - if you aren’t going to give out the user password, the account will need to login automatically on bootup. And if someone happens to log off (I almost never see this), they can just restart the machine to get back in again. You can also set your Macs to auto shutdown every night at a certain time (4am might be good) to ensure a fresh pristine environment on the next boot. And I encourage folks to use a flash drive or network space to save their files so they don’t lose any of their work (never expect important work to remain on a public lab machine). With this setup, files are gone after 2 reboots.

Steve

By: Steve Giessler

Steve Giessler — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 15:54:42 +0000

In the Mac labs that I manage at West Virginia University, I don’t use parental controls. Instead, I lock the dock with Onyx - a free utility made by the same folks that make Deeper (Titanium Software). We just have the machines logging in automatically with a non privileged account so they can’t delete apps, etc. I wrote a very simple shell script to automatically replace the home directory of the default user on every shutdown (or restart). This way, the next time the user turns on a machine to use it, a perfect original copy of the default user’s home directory is restored - background settings, screen saver, default web page, etc are all back to pristine defaults. This is a nice setup, because the users can mess it up all they want and then you just reboot the machine and you’re back to normal. The script also saves files saved in the account to a folder for one subsequent boot so no one loses any files that they may have saved locally.

Here is the script that runs on every shutdown (or restart):

#!/bin/sh
rm -rf /Users/user.bak
mv /Users/user Users/user/bak
tar -C /Users -xf /Users/user.tar

This script is for a default user named “user.” You have to make a “user.tar” file of your pristine directory there in order this to work (tar cfp /Users/user.tar /Users/user). Be sure permissions are chmod 700 and owned by root for this script. Lastly, create a shutdown script in your /Library/StartupItems folder which will activate the above script on Shutdown, be sure permissions are correct for this and you’re done!

If you’re not comfortable with the Unix command line and shell scripting, alternatively you can buy a commercial product that does the same thing as the scripts (and much more): It is called Deep Freeze - get it here:

http://www.faronics.com/html/DFMac.asp

I’m not sure why folks above are concerned about users changing the password. They have to know the current password before they can change it right? So it shouldn’t be a problem - just don’t tell anyone the default user password. We have an admin account on our machines that we give to certain individuals who need to be able to install software, etc. Mike Bombich’s Netrestore is awesome for managing Mac labs though he needs to update it for Leopard (still works with Leopard but with some limitations). And with Apple Remote Desktop you can really have nice control of your Mac labs!

Hope this helps some of my fellow Macintosh Lab managers out there!

Blessings,

Steve

By: Paul Sparrow

Paul Sparrow — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 08:36:29 +0000

Same problem here, student lab just set up with Leopard and on turning on Parental controls it blocks ALL web access! fix from Bill Freese NOT a fix for us!

By: steveblue

steveblue — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 16:58:11 +0000

Thanks Bill! Sounds like good advice until Apple makes a fix. I will try this in our lab this week!

By: Bill Freese

Bill Freese — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 22:47:49 +0000

Steve,
We have the solution. You have to select “Try to limit access to adult websites automatically”. Then select “Allow unrestricted access to websites” again. That solved the problem for us. It seems the default choice shown in the Parental Control control panel and the default behavior do not match. Making the choice made the change.