[TigerHeart.ua]

Hi!
I wish to warn you, that every user, including your children can easy disable Master lock in a few seconds!!! Anybody can locate the "userdata" folder, open the file "profiles.xml" and change the line "lockmode" from "3" (in my case) to "0". That's all! No any Master lock anymore!!! We've got a full access!!!

[spiff]

yes, it's not supposed to be all that safe. if you need real security from your technically skilled children, use your operating system's capability.

[jhsrennie]

If your children are savvy enough to edit XML files then they'll be all over the Internet, at friends houses if not at yours.

I use a separate Windows user account for my children and their friends. This means they have their own separate database, playlists etc, and I use file permissions to block access to any folders I deem suspect. It also restricts their ability to download viruses and spam apps onto my PC.

I suspect they're still managing to see all sorts of stuff on the web, but at least they have the good grace not to tell me so I'd worry about it :-)

JR

[TigerHeart.ua]

I use a separate Windows user account for my children and their friends.

Ok. I understand. But thats all is good for Windows. What about XBMC, booted from USB Flash Drive? What if they'll plug this Flash Drive into the Windows or Ubuntu system?
Thanks.

[steppedup]

For USB folks: http://lifehacker.com/154465/on+the+fly-...lash-drive
via lifehacker specific search.

For Windows folks...
Why not set up two users on your computer? (Assuming windows, but also applicable to linux/ unix whatever).

Admin is you. Lower rights user is the XBMC account.

You make the Appdata\XBMC\userdata\profiles.xml read only.

Log on with the lower rights account as your XBMC account.

[Doctor3D]

If you're only using XBMC-LIVE distro on that machine. Just go into the BIOS and add a system password -- and force password to be entered to let machine boot. They would have to remove the battery to get around that -- but you could also put a pad lock on the case lid.

[darkscout]

You could go ultra hyper lock down with BIOS password. Then Grub Password, THEN make sure that the home directory is encrypted and the password isn't saved.

That way it'll take 3 different passwords just to boot.

You could THEN also make 'userdata' directory a separate (encrypted obviously) partition. Make sure that fstab mounts it as read only. (You won't be able to save any settings, but mount it rw as root once and get things setup how you want them). Or you could just do permissions 755, change the owner to root. Then they can't edit the files without root.

or, you could talk to your kids about anything they shouldn't be getting into and that should do it. I doubt 8 year olds are going to have the technical savvy to break in so they can watch 300.