There are some tools that allow you to control user's actions, read about 
'sudo' (use with care, see remarks below). a nice tool to control users i 
found latly is 'and' (auto nicing deamon - a Luser's Attitude Readjustment 
Tool as described in the man page), it allows you to renice applications on 
the system and even kill certain applications after a defined amount of time 
for certain users/groups.

Regards,
Shlomil

Mark Veltzer wrote:
> Re: Configuring GDM to limit user actions
> From: Mark Veltzer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: "David Sapir" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> On Sunday 08 February 2004 15:34, you wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I would like to know how to configure Gnome on RH9 for a specific user:
> > * control the menus from the "start menu" (which item will appear in the
> > menues)
> > * control which application a user can activate (run)
> > * require a root password (or a previledged user password) for certain
> > applications
> >
> > I did not find a suitable answer for that on the web.
> > Maybe anyone has a lead for me to follow?
> > If you think ÂI cannot accomplish that in Gnome environment, please tell
> > me which env and how to do it (or where to look for the answer), because
> > I don't know any other GUI environments.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > David.
>
> David!
>
> Your entire state of mind is so out of touch with how computers work that I
> don't even know where my answer should begin. Here is a feeble attempt:
> 1. The operating system does not, per se, state which applications each
> user can run. If a user has running capabilities then he can launch any
> executable file. Even an executable file which was derived from consulting
> some greek all knowing oracle who can program in binary.
> 2. The desktop may hide some buttons but this is no guaratee what so ever
> that the user wont be able to launch an application. You better look at
> buttons as fast ways of doing things and not as "you can/can't" separators.
> This is not windows we are talking about.
> 3. No set of standard desktop applications has been certified as "not
> allowing in some strage way to launch a shell" since launching a shell is
> absolutely allowed in Linux (and encouraged for that matter).
> 4. If you take konqueror for example, it will allow you to have a shell
> running inside it.
> 5. The number of ways you could manipulate an application to launch a shell
> for you is so numerous that I can't really think of a large GUI application
> which I CANT launch a shell from by manipulating it in some way.
> 6. If this entire concept of yours is some marketing peoples idea for "the
> users not touching our system" go back to them and tell them it's a dream.
> 7. GDM is just the login application and does not control what the user
> sees or does not see on his desktop. The user can even login from GDM to a
> KDE environment.
>
> Hope this helps in some way.
>
> Cheers,
> ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂMark
>
> BTW: just for the record - the situation in windows is a lot worse since in
> most windows distributions the user has installation priveleges on the
> machine so he can actually halt the machine (for instance by running an
> installation process which removes critical files) or render the machine
> unbootable. In Linux he could just launch applications and not hurt anyone
> but himself. Quite an improvement.
>
> --
> Name: Mark Veltzer
> Title: Research and Development, Meta Ltd.
> Address: Habikaa 17/3, Kiriat-Sharet, city.holon, Gush-Dan, country.israel
> 58495
> Phone: +972-03-5581310
> Fax: +972-03-5581310
> Email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Homepage: http://www.veltzer.org
> OpenSource: CPAN, user: VELTZER, mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED], url:
> http://search.cpan.org/author/VELTZER/
> Public key: http://www.veltzer.org/ascx/public_key.asc, wwwkeys.pgp.net,
> 0xC71E5D38
>
>
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