[Buildroot] Browser in kiosk mode

[Buildroot] Browser in kiosk mode

[Marco Trapanese]

Hi, I'm asking some hints about which is the best solution in buildroot 
to have a browser in kiosk mode with a whitelist.
I mean, a full-screen browser, with no way to change the settings, and a 
list of allowable addresses.

Firefox has a couple of plugins to achieve that but it's not included 
(yet?) in buildroot. I found this:

http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/buildroot/2012-September/058314.html

I guess it won't be included soon, because the patches are there since 
2012. Anyway I will try to use them on the latest version.

Do you recommend other packages already provided in the current 
buildroot version which I could use?
Thanks!
Marco

[Buildroot] Browser in kiosk mode

[Thomas Petazzoni]

Marco,

On Wed, 20 Jan 2016 13:36:58 +0100, Marco Trapanese wrote:
> Hi, I'm asking some hints about which is the best solution in buildroot 
> to have a browser in kiosk mode with a whitelist.
> I mean, a full-screen browser, with no way to change the settings, and a 
> list of allowable addresses.
> 
> Firefox has a couple of plugins to achieve that but it's not included 
> (yet?) in buildroot. I found this:
> 
> http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/buildroot/2012-September/058314.html
> 
> I guess it won't be included soon, because the patches are there since 
> 2012. Anyway I will try to use them on the latest version.
> 
> Do you recommend other packages already provided in the current 
> buildroot version which I could use?

We have a package called qt-webkit-kiosk, maybe this would match what
you are looking for?

Thomas
-- 
Thomas Petazzoni, CTO, Free Electrons
Embedded Linux, Kernel and Android engineering
http://free-electrons.com

[Buildroot] Browser in kiosk mode

[Marco Trapanese]

Il 20/01/2016 13:55, Thomas Petazzoni ha scritto:
> We have a package called qt-webkit-kiosk, maybe this would match what 
> you are looking for? Thomas 

Hi Thomas,
thank you! I didn't see that package. I will try it.
Best regards

[Buildroot] Browser in kiosk mode

[Gustavo Zacarias]

On 20/01/16 09:36, Marco Trapanese wrote:

> Hi, I'm asking some hints about which is the best solution in buildroot
> to have a browser in kiosk mode with a whitelist.
> I mean, a full-screen browser, with no way to change the settings, and a
> list of allowable addresses.
>
> Firefox has a couple of plugins to achieve that but it's not included
> (yet?) in buildroot. I found this:
>
> http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/buildroot/2012-September/058314.html
>
> I guess it won't be included soon, because the patches are there since
> 2012. Anyway I will try to use them on the latest version.
>
> Do you recommend other packages already provided in the current
> buildroot version which I could use?
> Thanks!
> Marco

Hi.
You can do that with any browser using squid in transparent mode with a 
whitelist, that way you're not tied to any particular solution (plugin, 
addon).
Regarding which browser to use that will probably depend on which 
features you want/need and which graphics platform you want to run it on 
(example: X11, pure framebuffer, EGL, so on).
Regards.

[Buildroot] Browser in kiosk mode

[Marco Trapanese]

Il 20/01/2016 14:26, Gustavo Zacarias ha scritto:
> You can do that with any browser using squid in transparent mode with 
> a whitelist, that way you're not tied to any particular solution 
> (plugin, addon).
> Regarding which browser to use that will probably depend on which 
> features you want/need and which graphics platform you want to run it 
> on (example: X11, pure framebuffer, EGL, so on).


Interesting, thanks!
The best would be to run in framebuffer or eglfs because I already have 
a working environment.
About the features, I think it should run javascripts and flash contents 
because most websites use them. Of course, because the whitelist, we 
will allow only trusted websites.

How do you think to avoid the user to change options?

[Buildroot] Browser in kiosk mode

[Gustavo Zacarias]

On 20/01/16 10:32, Marco Trapanese wrote:

> About the features, I think it should run javascripts and flash contents
> because most websites use them. Of course, because the whitelist, we
> will allow only trusted websites.
>
> How do you think to avoid the user to change options?

Hi.
For flash you'll need to run in some x86 platform since it requires the 
propietary binary flash plugin (there's gnash but it never went far 
enough i believe). You'll also need X11 for it i think, and some 
nsplugin-aware browser.
Well, squid in transparent proxy mode intercepts all http traffic so 
there's no other way out if you lock down networking additionally via 
iptables to avoid accessing some external proxy - browser settings won't 
matter since the list is handled by squid itself in it's config file or 
external acl file, or some other way via a helper program like squidguard.
See: http://www.webdnstools.com/articles/squid-proxy-whitelist
Regards.