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before my first few questions, let me begin with a background story(tl;dr below):

So, I'm setting up some new computers at my workplace for public access and I had the bright idea(and I still think it is) to install ubuntu on them. I have about 2 weeks of experience with 'linux and friends' as of today and I'm at least a little proud of what I've achieved, but I'm at a loss right now as I can't find solutions to my problems. I want to make all regular users invisible, one already is(the template-user for the guest), so there's only the guest-account to choose from.
I want this for numerous reasons, we run an big indoor playground, so a lot of nosy kids and dumbfound parents(of which 99% are indoctrinated with windows... like me) will be using these computers. Limiting their choices will mean less questions, which is good, since no one other than me will be able to answer, and I ain't there all of the time.

TL;DR-ish:

So this is what I'm wondering:

If all regular users are invisible, and since guest has no privileges, how do I log in to them if I need to change anything? (I don't want manual login-screen)

More relevant info/thoughts: invisibility is setup by editing /var/lib/AccountsService/users/user-file and changing SystemAccount=false to true. I've skimmed by something saying you could set userid below 1000 to achieve the same result, would this method change anything regarding my problem, you know, like making it easier?
Can I do something from the TTY? (what ever that is, it really confuses me, what separates it from the normal Ctrl+Alt+T terminal?)
Maybe I'm going at this the wrong way, is there a boot-menu or something I could use to gain access? And if so, can I block little potential junior hackers from using it?

Hope that helps you help me, if there's something unclear or something you need to know, just ask away. :)

ConAnd
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2 Answers2

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The first thing to do is to choose strong password with at least 16 characters.

TTY or console is just a non graphical terminal.

guest is a restricted account with limited privileges and you can't sudo with that account.

Your only option if you have disabled the other admin account on the login screen, is to switch to a console (aka use ctrl-alt-f1) and do your administration work there. This will mean using only the command line, so you need to improve your cli-fu to be fluent with it.

Mainly you need to know apt-get, dpkg, apt-cache, apt-file, nano

Disable TTYs

And you can disable ttys also, but then the only way to administer the PC will be via ssh (if it is connected to a LAN), given you have installed and configured openssh-server correctly.

Community
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solsTiCe
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  • Thanks for the great info, can I use the console and TTY for the same stuff? Given I have full privileges for the user I'm logged in as for the console. Does the TTY not care about the current users privileges?

    I assume you use "cli-fu" as a slang of sorts to indicate I need to familiarize myself with client commands, or is it a thing?

     – ConAnd May 29 '15 at 11:00
  • http://xkcd.com/196/ – solsTiCe May 29 '15 at 11:06
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Welcome to Linux!

I have a very hacky and inelegant way that might work:

  1. Go to the TTY by typing for instance Ctr+Alt+F1
  2. Login as the user you would like to switch to (administrator)
  3. Type the command startx to start the GUI of this user
  4. Then, once in this session (Ctr+Alt+F8), open a terminal by pressing Ctr+Alt+T
  5. Type unity to restart unity.

It will still be a bit buggy but it worked for me.

A.B.
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Prolix
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  • A thought, could I access TTY from the login-screen? (Don't have access to the computers as I have them at home and are at work right now, might seem a bit backwards, but my role at this company is not related to computers) And if so, could I figure out and launch the same commands as lightDM to login as the user I want? – ConAnd May 29 '15 at 10:52
  • You can of course access TTY from the login-screen, but if you start or restart lightdm from like that it will bring you back to the login-screen and not in the wanted user session. At least under usual configuration of lightdm. – Prolix May 29 '15 at 11:20