bworks_shop  

[bworks_shop] Content Filtering for EAC Machines?

Matthew Juneau
Tue, 15 Sep 2009 18:03:30 -0700

I know this is something that's been discussed a number of times, but  
I think I may have finally found something resembling (or approaching  
resembling?) a working solution.

Enough superlatives and greyness in that for you?  =)

Anyways, I stumbled across a couple ubuntuforums threads/posts  
discussing using Dan's Guardian with tinyproxy: (squid is overkill.)

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=207008
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=1222237

I've tested it out on a Hardy VM, and it seems to work fairly well.   
It's transparent, which means you don't have to specify a proxy in the  
browser.  It's global, so it works for all users.

I do have some concerns however...

The installation and configuration doesn't bother me so much.  We  
could do that at the shop.

Updating blacklists doesn't bother me so much either.  The Multnomah  
Education Service District in Oregon maintains a blacklist 
[http://squidguard.mesd.k12.or.us/ 
] and we could easily whip up a script to do all the magic and  
schedule it in cron.

No, what worries me is if a parent wants something in particular  
(black|white)listed...  Because this would normally require editing a  
text file, which as we all know, is the bane of Linux's  
existence.  ;)  Oh yeah, and restarting the daemon.

There appears to have been at one time a Dan's Guardian module for  
webmin, but it's mostly MIA now.  I've not seen much in the way of a  
GUI either.

Questions?  Comments?  Snide remarks?

m.
:wq!