Software or utility for parental control?

English Open Chat
#1

Is there a utility I can use to configure timed sessions? I recently migrated our home computer to OpenSuse and my son is adapting well despite some initial resistance, but he tends to work long hours and I will like to include some reminders or limits to ensure he gets proper rest too

Thanks in advance and sorry if this is not the right forum

#2

Apart from the fact that people might come here with more sophisticated solutions, you could create a script to be run by root’s crontab that kills his processes. Be carefull at what to kill, ruthlessly killing the desktop might have side effects at next login.

A way to prevent a user to login is by changing is login shell to /bin/false and back to /bin/bash at certain times. This can be done by root using chsh (see man chsh) in root’s crontab. But it does not prevent him from staying loged in, thus the killing may still be needed.

HTH (and wait for better solutions).

#3

enrique marrodz wrote:
> Is there a utility I can use to configure timed sessions? I recently
> migrated our home computer to OpenSuse and my son is adapting well
> despite some initial resistance, but he tends to work long hours and I
> will like to include some reminders or limits to ensure he gets proper
> rest too

I think screensavers can be set to enforce a five or ten minute break
every hour, if that’s of any use. I’ve never tried, so you’ll need to
search the preferences/options/settings.

#4

Thanks a lot for the suggestion

I wonder if there are some solutions less “aggressive” :wink: I mean, a reminder and log out utility would suffice, so he can take a break. Not really wanting to shutdown all his work unexpectedly

I use to have a similar solution from my ISP when the computer worked in Windows. In any case is not a deal breaker but being so user friendly I would like to have something like that

Regards

#5

I understand what you want. Normaly this would be in the realm of the user her/himself, maybe a feature of the desktop. I doubt if you will find “kind” methods to be executed by root (which is of course the only one besides the user who can do anything).