On Sun, 7 May 2000, Andrew Scotchmer wrote:
Hi again,
Can anyone help with this question as I need it for a newspaper article I am
writing about the Linux system. Is there any way root can view the web browsers
history content of a particular user or how long a connection has been for?
For the history, it's really simple : each user's history is in his
$HOME/.netscape/history.list file. This file (as ANY other file) is of
course accessible by root.
About the lenght of the connection, could you be more precise, and tell
what exactly you want to know? If you are talking about monitoring each
tcp connection, (ie : watch "which computer is accessing which internet
site"), this can be done with netsat.
I beleive, and I don't know if you agree, that one area in which Linux can grow
is with the security it offers to parents who worry over how much time is spent by
their children surfing the net and what it is they are viewing. Of course there are
programs that stop particular material and sites being viewed, but my experience
of them whilst in windows was less than impressive.
Sure! Again, you monitor each connection currently in use with netstat and
you can setup a firewall to precise that "This computer cannot have access
to This site" or "Nobody can access this computer on the ftp port" and
things like that.
The tool to set it up is called "ipchains" and has recently been discussed
on this list.
Err, I won't even tell you my feelings about windows in that matter... :-)
(anyway this is not the place to discuss about it.)
Therefore with the concern that is being voiced about the internet's content
and the lack of control parents have over what their children can view
(in England anyway and I presume elsewhere) I feel that this is an area that Linux
can exploit. By showing parents that if they owned the root account they
are free to view the files and actions of their children and even dis-allow
permission to the internet if they are on a night out and worried that
their fifteen year old, or worse, their baby sitter, may be running up a huge bill
on the telephone, may be one way to increase the interest and popularity of both
Linux and the open source movement.
This is true. But at the moment, this kind of monitoring requires usually
a knowledge about TCP/IP and a "rather deep" (but not TOO deep, yet)
understanding of the OS that most people are not ready to afford. I think
it's just because they are kind of "afraid" of comuters, and don't want
to spend the time needed to learn how it all works (just my point of
view!!!).
Nevertheless, I'm sure that soon, developpers will create tools to make
all this easier. I'm not in favour of the "to make it work, just
click here, and click here" philosophy (cfr KDE), but I realize that it
could help some people.
Well sorry it's been so long winded but your comments on my question or on
the subject as a whole would be appreciated.
Well, I think that if you are going to write about linux (in a positive
way!! ;-) ) in a magasine or any publication, it's worth the time to read
and answer you.
Keep on spreading the good word!
HTH
Flupke
PS : Maybe you could mention freeBSD, openBSD, and such. Those are other
free unix operating systems, but they require a somewhat deeper knowledge
of computers and networks.
--
Andrew
Blackburn
England
--Learning at the deep end--
