disabling menu, root access, keeping icons


Forum: HD Install
Topic: disabling menu, root access, keeping icons
started by: tyrone

Posted by tyrone on Jan. 05 2005,23:58
I am running dsl from a laptop in a club,  I want to disable root access via the menu, and make the icons appear by default.  And possibly get rid of the menu altogether, and just have icons.

System works great using a ibm thinkpad770x wireless

Tyrone

Posted by Cattrah on April 01 2005,23:56
I, too would like to disable the menu via right click. It would be best if I could use some kind of key sequence + right click to make it pop up. I'm creating a kiosk for children to play games on and I do not want them to get into any menu stuff, only be able to access the icons on the desktop. Any help is greatly appreciated.
Posted by mikshaw on April 02 2005,03:36
I can't think of any way to do this in fluxbox without recompiling the program.
Perhaps you could consider a different window manager.  For example, evilwm is a root window only.  You can still have your background image/color, but all applications are started through configurable hotkeys rather than a menu.
I'm not sure how well xtdesktop works with it though.

Posted by Cattrah on April 04 2005,19:17
hmm, I have limited time to complete this. I find that even if I have it point to a blank menu it still gives a menu with a terminal, and reboot options. Which is a bit annoying, but I guess may work okay for purposes of passing off my project. I'll look into those other options however, thanks!
Posted by clacker on April 04 2005,20:31
Cattrah, have you tried editing the /home/dsl/.fluxbox/menu file and removing the offending items?  Then restart X windows to see your changes.  Unless you removed that option from the menu.  In that case type <crtl><alt><del> and then startx.

If you are remastering, remember to change /KNOPPIX/etc/skel/.fluxbox/menu or when you restart you won't see your changes.  I'm assuming you are remastering or the little people restarting the computer would give them access to everything.

I liked your key idea of hiding things until you want them.   .fluxbox/keys holds the key bindings.  Again remastering requires you to change the /etc/skel/.fluxbox/keys file.

I think it might be possible to write a shell script like the folowing to load the old menu back when you type a certain key:

Code Sample
#!/bin/bash
rm /home/dsl/.fluxbox/menu
cp /home/dsl/.fluxbox/menu.old /home/dsl/.fluxbox/menu
# something to restart fluxbox
# I don't know how to do that but someone else might
#.fluxbox/menu.old would need to be in the skel directory for remastering


One word of advice: children are like mice.  You never know how they get into things, but they do!  They aren't evil, but they're dirty, they make other things dirty, and they cause damage.  Get rid of the xterm icon and ANYTHING that lets them do anything but play.

Posted by Cattrah on April 04 2005,22:56
hey! Thanks for the suggesstions. Yes, I am remastering, I'm doing it from a hard drive install and have had all my settings persist upon recompressing and making the iso and all of that, so I'm confident any changes I make concerning the menu will persist. What's weird about the whole menu thing is that I made my own menu file and it had nothing in it concerning links, just the menu opening and closing tags and when I ran it, it still gave me the limited window with a shell and all that. This is what I had:

Code Sample

Debian MENU
[begin] (Ponies)
Hello There
[end]
Debian END


all I wanted to pop up was Hello there with Ponies as the menu title, but no dice. I guess I really don't understand how fluxbox works in the matter.  That shell script sounds like an awesome idea, but even still I can't get a non-existant menu to show, or even just a blank one with "Hello" in it, so reloading the full menu doesn't really help, although that is quite clever.

I peeked in the keys file and I can't see how I can modify that to override the right mouse click to pop the menu, if that's possible, that would instantly solve my problem. I guess I'll have to poke around some more

You're totally right about kids! lol This remaster I have is in no way kid proof yet, but I hope for the future after I pass off the project that I can make it much more stable for its intended purpose. To begin with it's cute and works enough to impress my professor and classmates LOL!

Posted by clacker on April 04 2005,23:22
Cattrah, which menu did you edit?  Only the one in /etc/skel/.fluxbox matters when your doing a remaster.
Posted by Cattrah on April 04 2005,23:44
both, still when I make the menu blank, it renames the title to Ponies but it still gives me xterm, Restart, and Exit as options and that's it. :-P So frustrating. On a side note, do you know what I need to do to get java applets to run? there's a lot of firefox related thingies I can download in mydsl but which one will enable applets? BTW I'm running dsl 0.9.3
Posted by mikshaw on April 05 2005,01:36
Your menu file is borked.  "Hello There" is not a valid menu line.

Check out this link for help with menu, keys, and other fluxbox thingies.
< http://fluxbox.sourceforge.net/docbook.php >

here's an example:
[begin] (ponies)
[nop] (Hello There)
[end]

Posted by Cattrah on April 05 2005,03:36
gah! You're amazing!! *dances around happily*
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