[FreeNX-kNX] Keep NX-Users to their home directory

[Kurt Pfeifle]

On Saturday 16 October 2004 16:57, Christian Lensch wrote:

> Hello List,
> 
> I have a somewhat tricky question and I do not expect to get a complete 
> answer to it but maybe someone could
> put me in the right direction to it.
> My scenario:
> 
> I would like to give a friend of mine the possibility to login to my 
> Freenx-Server from his Windows-Box at home via a
> modem.
> On his desktop he should only find buttons for one or two applications 
> (e.g. firefox and thunderbird, kmail and konqueror, etc)

That's perfectly possible. However you should be aware that running
single application windows via NX/FreeNX is still not yet as perfomant
and stable as running full desktop sessions. 

The reason is: full desktop sessions benefit from all 3 NX technologies:
X traffic compression, X traffic caching and X roundtrip suppression.

Single application windows are currently only benefitting from 
compression and caching, but still suffer from all the roundtrips. And 
roundtrips make things slower than they need to be.

> He should not  
> be able to browse the whole root-directory of my server, but only his 
> own home-directory.

"Browse root directory"?

You meant to say that he shouldnt see a complete desktop, but just
the mail and webbrowsing programs? (If he has a shell, he surely
can "browse" your / directory -- with the permissions you give
to his account).

> The idea is to give him the possibility to use my server (which has a 
> dsl-connection) for a faster browsing-experience than he would have with 
> his modem under windows.
> 
> Anyone thought about this before?

I'm using something like this all the time. For me it is that I 
with ISDN-speed to a server on the internet (via NX) where a full
desktop of mine runs 

Why do you want your friend to deprive from a full Linux desktop?
Do you want him to remain a MS prisoner all his life?   ;-)

In case you think he is confused by the many programs and options:
well, lock down his NX desktop on your server with the "kiosktool" 
of KDE-3.3, remove the "Start" button (or remove many entries from 
the start menu), remove most icons from the desktop and just leave 
the konqi and kmail ones left...

> Greetings and thanks for any help.
> Christian

> BTW: This Freenx-thing is one of the coolest things I came across so far...

True -- but 99% of the credits should go to Gian Filippo Pinzari
and NoMachine for putting many man-years of work to develop the
base technology. We should never forget this -- FreeNX is just
a very thin layer on top of the NoMachine/NX achievements.

Cheers,
Kurt