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.

Base Packages

yum -y update
yum -y install epel-release
yum makecache
yum -y install chromium  wget zstd xorg-x11-xinit NetworkManager-wifi

XFCE

yum -y group install Xfce
yum -y install xorg-x11-drv-evdev xorg-x11-server-Xorg

OpenBox (Preferred)

yum install -y openbox xorg-x11-drv-libinput xorg-x11-server-utils xorg-x11-xinit libev

Unclutter

• 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

TTY Config

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

Auto Start Window Manager

• Choose which one you want, startxfce4 or openbox-session.

cat << EOF>>/home/publicuser/.xinitrc
exec openbox-session
EOF

Reboot and you should see the desktop start up. If it does not troubleshoot.

Configure Chromium Auto-Start

XFCE

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

OpenBox

mkdir -p /home/publicuser/.config/openbox

cat << EOF > /home/publicuser/.config/openbox/autostart
/usr/bin/xset -dpms s off s noblank &
/usr/bin/chromium-browser --user-data-dir=/home/publicuser --noerrdialogs --kiosk https://site.tld/webpage &
/usr/bin/unclutter &
EOF

Configure Power Settings and Disable Mouse Pointer

• NOTE : This is configured for xfce. Another set of instructions will follow for openbox.

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

Reload Chromium via CRON

Ran into an issue with flaky wifi and Chromium not reloading the page during a gateway timeout. Add a cron job for publicuser with the following

@hourly DISPLAY=:0 /home/publicuser/restart.sh

Create the restart script at /home/publicuser/restart.sh

#!/bin/bash
killall chromium-browser
sleep 1
/usr/bin/chromium-browser --user-data-dir=/home/publicuser --noerrdialogs --kiosk https://site.tld/webpage &

Mark executable

chmod u+x /home/publicuser/restart.sh