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Every now and then I would like to give my home desktop or laptop to someone to check their mails or lookup something on the web while I am not watching them. I am using Debian 6 (squeeze) and was looking for a more clever solution than just creating an account for them and delete it afterwards.

Can someone please point me to a Debian package or a step-by-step instruction to setup a non-persistent account for a graphical session that a logged on user can create by some clicks? The account should be deleted from the system at next reboot or so. I am currently using GDM, but open to KDM or lightDM.

Community
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wigy
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2 Answers2

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All I can offer are some ideas that still need more work:

  • Create a normal account with the right permissions where "/home/guest" is on a ramdisk so it gets refreshed on every boot
  • Add a line that cleans "/home/guest" in the session script
  • Bravely try to compile the Ubuntu gdm-guest-session package into Debian
harrymc
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Just a shot in the dark here but wouldn't creating a user called guest whose $HOME points to /tmp/guest be enough? The contents of /tmp are cleaned out on each reboot (depending on your settings but regulalry in any case).

Unless someone knows why it is a horrible idea, it should at least be worth a try:

sudo useradd -mb /tmp/ guest
terdon
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