I need to set up an Ubuntu 22.04 box so that on startup it enters a graphical environment with a web browser showing a specified page. No access to other applications. (I'd call this a "kiosk" configuration but having spent some time with Google that phrase can mean different things so I wanted to be clear).
There's going to be quite a lot of other stuff going on behind the scenes in support of the web interface but I have all that working. It's just the boot-to-browser bit that's an issue.
It's not public facing and I don't care if the boot sequence is visible, provided that as long as the box is left alone for a couple of minutes it will eventually end up at a web browser directed to localhost.
I've done stuff like this before but Ubunti 22.04 uses snaps rather than .deb packages and that changes the way the applications interact with the O/S - previously I've had systemd start lightdm start a bash script which starts Chromium or Firefox in kiosk mode, but it doesn't seem possible that way any more. But the reality is that I don't need a minimal install so I may well have overthought things in the past.
On Wed, May 03, 2023 at 02:12:46PM +0100, Mark Rogers wrote:
I've done stuff like this before but Ubunti 22.04 uses snaps rather than .deb packages and that changes the way the applications interact with the O/S - previously I've had systemd start lightdm start a bash script which starts Chromium or Firefox in kiosk mode, but it doesn't seem possible that way any more.
You don't *have* to use snap. I use Vivaldi (Chrome dbased) on my Ubuntu systems and that gets updated in conventional apt manner from the Vivaldi repository.
Hi Mark,
Let's not get into my solution is better than yours kind of discussion but have you considered using something like Dietpi OS? This is a lightweight "Ubuntu" which has an option to run chromium in kiosk mode (configurable from dietpi-config wizard)
Cheerio, Bart
3 May 2023 15:06:54 Chris Green cl@isbd.net:
On Wed, May 03, 2023 at 02:12:46PM +0100, Mark Rogers wrote:
I've done stuff like this before but Ubunti 22.04 uses snaps rather than .deb packages and that changes the way the applications interact with the O/S - previously I've had systemd start lightdm start a bash script which starts Chromium or Firefox in kiosk mode, but it doesn't seem possible that way any more.
You don't *have* to use snap. I use Vivaldi (Chrome dbased) on my Ubuntu systems and that gets updated in conventional apt manner from the Vivaldi repository.
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On Wed, 3 May 2023 at 15:20, BD dzidek23@gmail.com wrote:
Let's not get into my solution is better than yours kind of discussion but have you considered using something like Dietpi OS? This is a lightweight "Ubuntu" which has an option to run chromium in kiosk mode (configurable from dietpi-config wizard)
Thanks, I'll take a look.
I'm not wedded to Ubuntu 22.04, except that we have setup scripts that are built and tested on it and I don't want to have to make lots of changes if I don't have to. I tried a default Debian build and that didn't work for us (I think the issue was that it doesn't have PHP8 as standard but our scripts expected it, and we've just gone through a load of work to migrate a PHP7 application to work under PHP8 so didn't want to roll all that back now!)
I'll install DietPi on a VM and play.
Mark
On Wed, 3 May 2023 at 15:28, Mark Rogers mark@more-solutions.co.uk wrote:
On Wed, 3 May 2023 at 15:20, BD dzidek23@gmail.com wrote:
have you considered using something like Dietpi OS? This is a lightweight "Ubuntu" which has an option to run chromium in kiosk mode (configurable from dietpi-config wizard)
Thanks, I'll take a look.
OK, well that was interesting - and pretty quick to test - but: - The installer is very limited - it simply writes a pre-buit image to your HDD. Which falls foul of a criteria I hadn't mentioned: I need a custom disk set up to install RAID, and that's not an option in dietpi - It's based on Debian (not Ubuntu) and as such PHP installs to v7.4 not v8.x
I did try configuring it to book to a browser in Kiosk mode using the config wizard but it didn't work for me - but by this point it was only a curiosity as it seems I'm not going to be able to go any further with it so I left it there.
Which brings me back to square 1...
On Wed, 3 May 2023 at 15:06, Chris Green cl@isbd.net wrote:
You don't *have* to use snap. I use Vivaldi (Chrome dbased) on my Ubuntu systems and that gets updated in conventional apt manner from the Vivaldi repository.
True. But I snap wasn't my only issue, it was just one of many - for example I tried installing Google Chrome as that's still .deb based, but that just left me with a different set of problems, so I wanted to take a step back and ask how I should go about it on a clean install.
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BD -
Chris Green -
Mark Rogers