LTSP Killer.py

This is a small python script that I wrote for teaching in LTSP classroms. It prevents users to access specified programs.

• Example 1: If I'm teaching something that not requires access to the net I can start this script to avoid pupils to use web related programs for the time of the lesson.

• Example 2: I'm teaching... so no video games are allowed. I tell killer.py to kill all the gnome games.. At the end of the lesson pupils can play.

The basic functioning is simple: every 20 seconds the script checks if any of the target processes is running and brutally kills it.

Usage

• Open a terminal and go to the killer.py folder
• ./killer.py <arguments>

Arguments accepted are:

• any software executable name (check with top or pgrep for process exact name) e.g. ./killer.py firefox-bin gedit will block Firefox and Gedit
• a predefined group of programs e.g. <./killer.py games> will block all the softwares in the games group (gcompris, gnomines, same-gnome, ktuberling, gnibbless and some more)

Single user blocking

Killer.py can be used to prevent only a certain user to prevent to access the software or group, I added this because of a pupil that wanted to do some programming in the wrong moment.

• ./killer.py software,user e.g. ./killer.py gedit,philip

Customizing groups

Groups are defined in the first lines of the killer.py file, just add them properly with any text editor.

Localization

All the few messages are in Italian language.

License

This software is licensed under the GNU/GPL license, see here for details.