Kids useage timer help

Hi,

The aspire one is a great computer for kids, however it's also rather tempting for them to use it when they're supposed to be tucked up in bed!...there's plenty of applications I can find to spoil their fun for windows but I'm having no luck for linux...does anyone have any idea how I might proceed?
Thanks!

 

I'm not aware of any applications to do this, though I haven't been looking. You could modify the bootup script so it checks the time and if it is a time when your kids shouldn't be using this it turns itself off again. I suspect there are ways to control when a user can be logged on, but to do that you would need to set it up to boot to a login screen rather than the auto login that is default.

IMO, this isn't really something that needs a technological solution, if your kids use it when they shouldn't, then take it aways from them for a few days.

 

This will probably be the trick:
http://skindley.wordpress.com/2006/12/1 ... s-by-time/
Someone with the default, or slightly modified, Linpus might want to test this out and post back if any extra steps are required.

Alternatively I can picture a quick and dirty script that calls for a shutdown if the time range is valid. Placed in '/etc/cron.hourly' it would do its check once per hour, or you could add it to crontab so it runs every 30 or 15 minutes.

Note: Either way you'll want to modify it so they can't run 'sudo' or 'su -' to get root (admin) privledges. Otherwise they'll eventually figure out whats been done and undo it.