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Introduction

One of the features Mint has been lacking as a family desktop is the ability for parents to prevent their children from accessing certain websites. Parental control is easy to set up in Microsoft Windows and we got a lot of feedback from people who migrated to Linux and who missed this feature. Of course one could install DansGuardian and a few other packages but it’s not easy, it usually requires the use of a proxy and it’s also quite complex to configure. For Linux Mint 6 we came with a compromise and we decided to implement a minimal set of features but to make it as trivial to use as possible. So here comes mintNanny.

MintNanny is a small graphical interface which lets you “block” domain names. You can’t block domains for particular users or particular programs, the block is for everyone on the computer and for any protocol. When you “block” a domain in mintNanny it basically adds an entry to your /etc/hosts file and defines that domain’s IP address as being 0.0.0.0. This results in your computer not being able to communicate with the domain anymore. So if there are domains you really don’t want your children to have anything to do with, put them in mintNanny.

Remember that mintNanny blocks domain names, not IP addresses so if your children are smart enough to ping the domain from another computer they’ll be able to access it via its IP address.

Certain domains use subdomains and redirect to them so you might have to block them to. For instance if you want to block somewebsite.com you might also have to block www.somewebsite.com. As a rule of thumb try to access the website after you block it to see if your block was efficient enough.

Firefox caches DNS resolutions to speed things up. This means that it remembers where a website is until you close it. In other words, after you block a website, you’ll have to restart Firefox.

Installation

To install MintNanny you need the Romeo repositories. Perform an “apt update” and an “apt install mintnanny-gnome” in a terminal (or “apt install mintnanny-kde” if you run KDE).

If you don’t have Romeo set up, you can grab the packages from here:

Translations

MintNanny will be one of the featured improvements coming with Linux Mint 6 Felicia. We’re actively trying to get the community to translate this tool. If you happen to speak another language than English, please help us translate mintNanny by participating to this forum thread:

http://www.linuxmint.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=17552

Bug reports and feedback

Tell us what you think by posting a comment on this blog post. Report bugs here as well.

 

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Three new commands made their way into Romeo last night: search, apt contains and apt content. All three of them are provided by mintSystem 5.5.

If you have Romeo set up as a repository simply type “apt update” and “apt install mintsystem”. Otherwise you can get the deb from here:

http://packages.linuxmint.com/pool/romeo/m/mintsystem/mintsystem_5.5_all.deb

apt content package

“apt content” shows the content of package, it’s a shortcut for “dpkg -L”. For instance, if you type “apt content mintsystem” you should see the following:

clem@mars ~/Desktop $ apt content mintsystem
/.
/usr
/usr/local
/usr/local/bin
/usr/local/bin/apt
/usr/lib
/usr/lib/linuxmint
/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintSystem
/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintSystem/icon.png
/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintSystem/python
/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintSystem/python/configobj.py
/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintSystem/templates
/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintSystem/templates/apt.conf
/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintSystem/templates/preferences
/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintSystem/GPL.txt
/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintSystem/version
/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintSystem/version/mintInstall
/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintSystem/version/mintInstall/portals.list
/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintSystem/version/mintInstall/release.id
/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintSystem/version/mintInstall/sources.list
/usr/share
/usr/share/doc
/usr/share/doc/mintsystem
/usr/share/doc/mintsystem/copyright
/usr/share/doc/mintsystem/changelog.gz

apt contains filename

“apt contains” tells you which package contains a particular file. It’s a shortcut for “dpkg -S”. For instance if you type “apt contains /usr/lib/linuxmint/mintSystem/GPL.txt” you should see the following:

clem@mars ~/Desktop $ apt contains /usr/lib/linuxmint/mintSystem/GPL.txt
mintsystem: /usr/lib/linuxmint/mintSystem/GPL.txt

search for keyword in directory

“search” lets you search for files containing a particular keyword. You can get a list of options by typing “search –help”:

clem@mars ~/Desktop $ search help

usage: search [arguments] [options]
arguments:
for text
in directory
options:
-c | –case-sensitive
-s | –show-filenames-only

“search” is easy to use. Let’s take an example and search for “workgroup” in /etc/samba. We type “search for workgroup in /etc/samba” and we see the following:

clem@mars ~/Desktop $ search for workgroup in /etc/samba
/etc/samba/smb.conf.ucf-old:26:# Change this to the workgroup/NT-domain name your Samba server will part of
/etc/samba/smb.conf.ucf-old:27:   workgroup = MSHOME
/etc/samba/smb.conf:26:# Change this to the workgroup/NT-domain name your Samba server will part of
/etc/samba/smb.conf:27:   workgroup = MSHOME

We can refine the search by adding “–case-sensitive” or only show filenames by adding “–show-filenames-only”. For instance:

clem@mars ~/Desktop $ search in /etc/samba for workgroup –case-sensitive –show-filenames-only
/etc/samba/smb.conf.ucf-old
/etc/samba/smb.conf

Let us know what you think and if you find any bugs. These will eventually be backported into Elyssa and will be featured as some of Mint 6’s improvements.

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Many thanks to the following donors and sponsors for financially supporting Linux Mint:

Sponsors:

– $70, Philippe Lotz (alsaphil – France)
– $81, Linuxmint-Shop.de (Germany) – http://www.linuxmint-shop.de
– $76, LinuxISOS.de (Germany) – http://www.linuxisos.de
– $45, Linux Compatible Poker (USA) – http://www.linuxcompatiblepoker.com
– $40, Az Van (newW2 – USA)
– $30, LinuxMint-Forum.de (Germany) – http://linuxmint-forum.de/
– $20, TOPIMMOBILIEN (Tim – Germany) – http://www.immobilien-es.com
– $10, Linux-Onlineshop (Germany) – http://www.linux-onlineshop.de
– $10, Tuxdevil Outsourcing LLC http://www.tuxdevil.net
– $10, Jim Rogers (USA)
– $10, MXD Internet Solutions (Filip Oscadal – Czech Republic) – http://www.mxd.biz
– $7, Panagiotis Papasaikas (Greece) – http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/ppapasai/
– $5, Guillermo Enrique Guglietti (Canada) – http://www.urbancsa.org
– $5, linuxmint-italia.org (Pietro Martino / prior123 – Italy) – http://www.linuxmint-italia.org
– $5, Alex P.
– $5, Dimitris Athanasiou (RHO, Greece) – http://www.speedtest.gr
– $5, Vassilis Skoullis (Greece)
– $5, Robert Holland
– $1, Lintelligence.de. (d00p – Germany) – http://www.lintelligence.de
– $1, Linuxmint.de (d00p – Germany) – http://www.linuxmint.de
– $1, Ian Egland (Echolynx – USA)
– $0.5 Martijn van Loon (aapiethaaap – Netherlands)

Donors:

– $200, Peter M. (Canada)
– $101, Frans Van O. (Netherlands)
– $72, V. Mark L. (Ireland)
– $72, Rafael G. V. (Spain)
– $72, Florian B. (Germany)
– $72, Christophe W. (Switzerland)
– $72, Gerard R. (France)
– $72, Matthias R. (France)
– $51 (2nd donation), Richard Svendsen (Norway)
– $50, Coleman D. (USA)
– $50, Theo L. (Switzerland)
– $50, David M.    (USA)
– $50, Paul V. (Canada)
– $50, Ennien A. (Canada)
– $45 (4th and 5th donations), Andreas L. (Norway)
– $29 (6th donation), Temel Balci (Germany)
– $29 (2nd donation), Vincent V. (France)
– $21 (4th donation), Frank Bechstein (Germany)
– $20, IT Servants (USA)
– $20, Tim V.-B. (UK)
– $20, Nathan H. (USA)
– $15, Robert N. (USA)
– $14, Carl K. (USA)
– $14, Marc M. (Belgium)
– $14, Costas K. (Greece)
– $14, Thorsten M.-R. (Germany)
– $14, Robert H. (Germany)
– $14, Daniel A. (Luxembourg)
– $10, Theodore P. (USA)
– $10 (2nd donation), Henry W.    (USA)
– $10 (2nd donation), James R.    (USA)
– $5, John S. (USA)
– $5, Bryan T. (USA)
– $0.1, Rytis S. (Lithuania)

Money raised in September:

* Donations: $1357.1
* Sponsors: $442.5

http://www.linuxmint.com/donors.php
http://www.linuxmint.com/sponsors.php