[NTLUG:Discuss] Can Linux help me limit my kids' time on the computer?

[David Stanaway]

If you needed to enforce the cut off, I suspect using a PAM session
accounting module would be the way to go. This would be fairly easy to
set up to prevent new logins after the time has expired, but not so for
shutting down an active session that goes over the time.

David Stanaway wrote:
> If you don't need to enforce it, then that is easy.
> 
> Last is your friend. I am sure there are tools that filter its output,
> alternatly there will be tools that look at /var/log/wtmp directly.
> 
> There is a python interface
> 
> python-utmp
> 
> on Debian, it doesn't have any reverse dependencies so I am not sure if
> there are any higher level tools that use it, but you might be able to
> use that, or a script that sums usage from wtmp.
> 
> Lance Simmons wrote:
>> On 12/26/06, steve <sjbaker1 at airmail.net> wrote:
>>
>>> But if you REALLY must do this (sending the message "I don't
>>> trust you" to your child).
>> It's not a trust issue.  It's that neither of us is really sure how
>> much time he's spending on the computer, and we need a way to find
>> out.  We've settled on an amount of time per week we agree he can
>> spend on the computer, but so far there's no easy way of monitoring
>> it.  I want an easy way to check how much time he's spent in the past
>> 7 days.
>>
>> The "last" command is promising (and I can't believe I didn't know
>> about it), but what a pain sorting through the output, and what about
>> all the login shells that are run during one session?  Isn't there a
>> program that can analyze the logs and give an accurate number of hours
>> he has used the computer each day?  It needs to be something he can
>> easily use to tell how much time he's on the computer.
>>
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