Guest Account, Local Only

[Beartooth]

On Fri, 25 Jan 2008 06:46:33 +0100, Cyberiade.it Anonymous Remailer wrote:

> I'm interested in setting up a guest account on my Ubuntu Gutsy system
> for local use only. Meaning, friends could have a username for one
> account to share, use all of the local devices, CDROM, floppy, USB, etc.
> and Internet, but with one condition:
> 
> No access to the normal user's directories and above ~/home directories.
> 
> The normal user being the one with the password to do sudo commands.
> 
> Would there be a simple step-by-step how-to on performing this? Would
> there be any disadvantages to doing this?

	We keep a laptop in the guest room, mainly for use as a loaner to 
house guests. I set up a user for each. When I bruited this about on my 
favorite LUG, I was warned that accounts getting little use were a 
favorite approach among crackers.

	So I set up various defenses. Chief among them is that I, as 
root, keep all the guest login shells set to /sbin/nologin, and only 
switch that to /bin/bash while a given guest is here.

	That is under Fedora 8. The comparable app in Ubuntu 7.10 seems 
to run "gksu users-admin," and not to have the /sbin/nologin option; but 
there is an option under Properties > Advanced called called /bin/false.

	No doubt someone here can tell us if the effect is indeed the 
same.

-- 
Beartooth Staffwright, PhD, Neo-Redneck Linux Convert
Remember I know precious little of what I am talking about.