I'm looking for an automatic way to lock out our home computer during certain pre-scheduled times of the day. Rather than rolling my own script for doing this, is there some off-the-shelf software for this use-case?
In case this matters, the solution need not be absolutely bullet-proof. I just need to raise the "activation barrier" just high enough to discourage casual use of the computer.
It looks like you can implement this through the standard Linux authentication system (called pam - Pluggable Authentication Modules). This (amongst other things) is responsible for checking if users can log in.
Within the pam system, there's a module called pam_time, which allows you to set restrictions for logins based on the time of day. This is controlled by the file /etc/security/time.conf.
Something like this could work:
login;tty*;!kjo;Wd1500-2000
- to prevent everyone except the kjo user from logging-in (ie, using the login service, on any tty* terminal) from 3pm to 8pm on weekdays. Be careful though, I haven't tested this!
There is quite a bit of documentation about the configuration format in the /etc/security/time.conf file, and check the pam_time and time.conf manual pages for more information:
man pam_time
man time.conf
Once you've configured time.conf to your liking, you'll need to uncomment the following line in your /etc/pam.d/login.conf:
account requisite pam_time.so
One module would be pam_time.
Your question may be answered by How do I restrict my kids computing time.
