Web Kiosk CentOS 7

Purpose

Boot into Chrome Kiosk mode and display a web page for digital signage.

Setup

Packages

A fresh install of CentOS 7 minimal. Please note the following

• x11 server did not install with the group install of Xfce, so it was installed separately.
• Keyboard and mouse did not work out the box, and I had to install the evdev drivers.

yum -y update
yum -y install epel-release
yum makecache
yum -y install nxorg-x11-server-Xorg chromium xorg-x11-drv-evdev wget zstd
yum -y group install Xfce

• Install unclutter, this is useful for getting rid of the mouse pointer when not in use.
• NOTE: I ran into issues downloading from archlinux, quick and dirty google search had me run across a git repo.
• Repo method: This has not been fully tested and may contain bad code.

yum install -y git libev-devel libX11-devel libXt-devel libXi-devel asciidoc 
yum groupinstall "Development Tools"
git clone https://github.com/Airblader/unclutter-xfixes && cd unclutter-xfixes
mkdir /usr/share/licenses/unclutter/
make
make install

• Arch method:

wget -O unclutter.tar.zst --content-disposition --max-redirect=5 https://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/x86_64/unclutter/download/
zstd -d unclutter.tar.zst -o unclutter.tar
tar -xf unclutter.tar
mv usr/bin/unclutter /usr/bin/unclutter
rm -rf usr

TTY1 Autologin

Now create the auto-login process.

useradd publicuser
rm /etc/systemd/system/getty.target.wants/getty@tty1.service
cp /lib/systemd/system/getty@.service /etc/systemd/system/getty@tty1.service
sed -i -e "s/\/sbin\/agetty/\0 --autologin publicuser/" /etc/systemd/system/getty@tty1.service
ln -s /etc/systemd/system/getty@tty1.service /etc/systemd/system/getty.target.wants/getty@tty1.service

cat << EOF >>/home/publicuser/.bash_profile
if [[ -z \$DISPLAY ]] && [[ \$(tty) = /dev/tty1 ]]; then # Check if we have a display and we're on TTY1
startx
else
echo "Please contact the help desk and provide the following"
echo "IP : "
echo "Hostname : $hostname"
fi
EOF

cat << EOF>>/home/publicuser/.xinitrc
exec startxfce4
EOF

reboot

After the reboot, you should see the desktop start up. If it does not troubleshoot.

Configure Chromium

Auto-start

cat << EOF>>/etc/xdg/autostart/kiosk.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Kiosk
GenericName=program
Comment=LobbyKiosk
Exec=chromium-browser --noerrdialogs --kiosk http://siteurl.tld
Icon=/usr/share/pixmaps/program.jpg
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=
OnlyShowIn=XFCE;
EOF

Homepage

• For now you run this after chromium creates it's directories.

sed -i s'|start.fedoraproject.org|yoursite.tld|g' /home/publicuser/.config/chromium/Default/Preferences

Configure Power Settings and Disable Mouse Pointer

We want to prevent the system from going to sleep, blanking the screen, loading the screen saver, or showing the pointer on the screen.
One issue I am having is understanding the best method for exporting the display. I am too used to working in bash and not with a gui. The following export does not work, but the display settings appear to still work.
Initially the xset commands were getting ignored by xfce power management. In order to get around this I had to use xfconf-query to make things stick

• Create the script

cat << EOF>>/home/publicuser/power.sh
#!/bin/sh
sleep 10
export DISPLAY=$(who | grep -E "publicuser pts\/[0-9]" | grep -Eo "\(:[0-9][.]?[0-9]?\)" | sed 's/(//; s/)//')
xfconf-query -c xfce4-power-manager -p /xfce4-power-manager/dpms-enabled -s false
/usr/bin/unclutter -grab
EOF

chmod +x /home/publicuser/power.sh
sed -i 's/<\/property>/\ \ <property\ name=\"blank-on-ac\"\ type=\"int\"\ value=\"0\"\/>\n&/g' /home/publicuser/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-power-manager.xml

• Create the auto-launch of the script.

cat << EOF>>/etc/xdg/autostart/power.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=powersettings
GenericName=program3
Comment=DisablePower
Exec=/home/publicuser/power.sh
Icon=/usr/share/pixmaps/program.jpg
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=
OnlyShowIn=XFCE;
EOF

Setup WordPess

But first I download and extract the files needed over ssh.

wget https://wordpress.org/latest.zip
unzip latest.zip
mv wordpress /var/www/html/
find /var/www/html/wordpress/ -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
find /var/www/html/wordpress/ -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;
mkdir /var/www/html/wordpress/logs
chown -R apache:apache /var/www/html/wordpress

• Setup a vhost to load the site.

cat << EOF >>/etc/httpd/conf.d/vhost.conf
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName localhost
DocumentRoot "/var/www/html/wordpress"
</VirtualHost>
EOF

• Up until now I have been setting this up remotely, however I will now need to start using the ol' keyboard and mouse so I can configure using localhost. Follow the standard wordpress setup.

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=225780

https://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/x86_64/unclutter/

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/660613/how-do-you-hide-the-mouse-pointer-under-linux-x11

https://ostechnix.com/auto-hide-mouse-pointer-using-unclutter-after-a-certain-time/#:~:text=Auto%20Hide%20Mouse%20Pointer%20Using%20Unclutter%20After%20A%20Certain%20Time%20In%20Linux&text=If%20the%20mouse%20cursor%20has,after%205%20seconds%20by%20default.

https://www.danpurdy.co.uk/web-development/raspberry-pi-kiosk-screen-tutorial/

https://superuser.com/questions/461035/disable-google-chrome-session-restore-functionality

https://superuser.com/questions/644804/disable-screensaver-screen-blank-via-command-line

https://askubuntu.com/questions/407287/change-xfce4-power-manager-option-from-terminal

https://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress#Famous_5-Minute_Installation