[CentOS] A simplistic parental-control setup

Marko Vojinovic

vvmarko at gmail.com
Wed Jan 4 23:58:17 UTC 2012


I am looking at the simplest (implementation-wise) solution to the following 
problem (on CentOS 6.2):

I have a list of web addresses (like http://www.example.com, https://1.2.3.4/, 
etc.) that should be "forbidden" to access from a particular host. On access 
attempt, the browser should be redirected to a local web page (file on the hard 
disk) with the explanation that those addresses are forbidden. The possible 
ways of disallowed access include:

* typing www.example.com or http://1.2.3.4/ in the browser
* typing www.example.com/anyfolder/somefile.html in the browser
* clicking on www.example.com when listed as a link on some other web site 
(say, Google search results)
* nothing else.

The last point above assumes that the users will never try any other method of 
accessing the site. These user's knowledge about computers in general is known 
to be elementary, so I don't need protection against geniouses who can figure 
out some obscure way to circumvent the lockdown (and please don't tell me that 
this is an irrational assumption, I know it is...).

If possible, all this should be on a "per user" basis, but if implementing it 
system-wide would be much simpler, I could live with it. :-)

The point is that I need a simple, easy-to-implement, easy-to-configure and 
easy-to-maintain solution for this particular usecase. What I don't need is 
some over-engineered solution that covers my usecase along with a whole bunch 
of stuff I will never need, and takes two months to configure properly. It 
should also be F/OSS, preferably included in CentOS repos or elsewhere.

Or alternatively I could go along with manually setting up a bogus 
httpd/dns/iptables configuration which would do all this, but I have a feeling 
that it would not be the easiest thing to maintain...

I'd appreciate any suggestions. :-)

Best, :-)
Marko





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