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So not strictly parental controls so to speak, but most Linux distributions will install PAM Pluggable Authentication Modules and those modules can be used to c

So not strictly parental controls so to speak, but most Linux distributions will install PAM Pluggable Authentication Modules and those modules can be used to control access to many things system login, network, etc... based on username, group, time of day, day of week and combinations of those things. It's not the easiest thing to configure and I don't know if there is a GUI for it but it may technically meet your needs. Without knowing what distribution you are using I usually start with the documentation on Arch's site [0][1]. They have really good documentation. This man page [2] shows some of the modules that can be used in PAM to add restrictions to various sub-systems. A simpler and probably heavy handed approach would be to have cron jobs that disable the network or shut down the computer during specific hours/days assuming the kids don't have sudo/doas/root permissions. There are also sites that have Block-Lists for adult content, spam, malware, etc... that can be added to local DNS, /etc/hosts or however you wish to manage them. There are also DNS providers that can do this for you should you wish to delegate the blocking to someone else. OpenDNS has this ability for example. [3] I have not tested it but there is a Firefox addon for adult content [4] called FoxFilter. [0] - https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Parental_control https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Parental_control [1] - https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PAM https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PAM [2] - https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man8/pam.8.html https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man8/pam.8.html [3] - https://www.opendns.com/setupguide/#familyshield https://www.opendns.com/setupguide/#familyshield [4] - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/foxfilter/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/foxfilter/

freedomben 3y ago
Thank you! That's a super helpful place to start. I've never messed with PAM before but it does make sense that might be a good place to implement things. I mainly use Fedora but the Arch wiki has tons of overlap, so is very helpful.
- LinuxBender 3y ago
  You're welcome. A word of caution, changes in PAM can break desktops. I would certainly research working examples that people have implemented on the same version of Fedora as you to avoid headaches. Or at least ensure you can boot into single user mode or boot off a RAM diskless distro to rescue your system. I would also back up the /etc/pam.d directory somewhere that is easy to find and maybe even do a git commit in that backup directory so you can walk backwards through your changes in case something breaks. rsnapshot is also a good way to preserve backups and snapshots of directories. Some of the PAM modules have corresponding commands that can rewrite the configuration files and reduce the risk of breaking something but not all modules have tooling in place yet probably due to a lack of popularity/demand. authselect, authconfig, etc... Another Firefox addon I neglected to mention is Block Website [1]. It can be configured in a reverse mode, only allowing websites that have been explicitly permitted. A password can be used on-demand to add new sites. IPTables can also be used to enable or block access to anything (by name single shot lookup, IP, port, etc...) [2] Using domain names in IPtables can be problematic if the site's IP changes before you restart IPTables or if a CDN is in the path with shared IP's and SNI TLS. [1] - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/block-website/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/block-website... [2] - https://ipset.netfilter.org/iptables-extensions.man.html https://ipset.netfilter.org/iptables-extensions.man.html # search for the "time" module.

freedomben 3y ago

Thank you! That's a super helpful place to start. I've never messed with PAM before but it does make sense that might be a good place to implement things. I mainly use Fedora but the Arch wiki has tons of overlap, so is very helpful.

LinuxBender 3y ago
You're welcome. A word of caution, changes in PAM can break desktops. I would certainly research working examples that people have implemented on the same version of Fedora as you to avoid headaches. Or at least ensure you can boot into single user mode or boot off a RAM diskless distro to rescue your system. I would also back up the /etc/pam.d directory somewhere that is easy to find and maybe even do a git commit in that backup directory so you can walk backwards through your changes in case something breaks. rsnapshot is also a good way to preserve backups and snapshots of directories. Some of the PAM modules have corresponding commands that can rewrite the configuration files and reduce the risk of breaking something but not all modules have tooling in place yet probably due to a lack of popularity/demand. authselect, authconfig, etc... Another Firefox addon I neglected to mention is Block Website [1]. It can be configured in a reverse mode, only allowing websites that have been explicitly permitted. A password can be used on-demand to add new sites. IPTables can also be used to enable or block access to anything (by name single shot lookup, IP, port, etc...) [2] Using domain names in IPtables can be problematic if the site's IP changes before you restart IPTables or if a CDN is in the path with shared IP's and SNI TLS. [1] - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/block-website/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/block-website... [2] - https://ipset.netfilter.org/iptables-extensions.man.html https://ipset.netfilter.org/iptables-extensions.man.html # search for the "time" module.