Running Firefox in kiosk mode on Ubuntu Gnome 16.04

So we bought a few industrial all-in-one PCs from Chinese company QI YU TAI. These PCs came with pre-installed Windows, but because of possible legal issues, we decided to replace the Windows with Ubuntu.

Basic parameters of those PCs are:

• Various Celeron processors.
• Screen size from 12 inch, up to 19 inch.
• eGalaxTouch resistive touch layer.
• SSD hard disk.

In the beginning I planned to install Ubuntu with a default desktop environment, Unity. Unfortunately Unity lacks support for on screen keyboard, so I had to switch to Gnome Desktop, which seems to be the best option for a touch screen in the Linux world.

Installation

1. Instal Ubuntu Gnome 16.04.

   Ubuntu homepage has several tutorials on creating a bootable USB stick.

2. Calibrate touch screen and save calibration, so it will be restored on every boot.

   By default the touch screen has inverted axis. To calibrate it, follow tutorial on Ubuntu homepage https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touchscreen

   I've used following scripts to load calibration on start of the system. But, for example, you can run xinput_calibrator without parameters, then follow printed instructions and store calibration as a X11 configuration.

   Optionally, you can install driver from touch screen manufacturer's site to support multitouch, gestures and more features http://www.eeti.com.tw/drivers_Linux.html

   Note: calibration of a rotated screen can be quite challenging. I had to do it manually by changing calibration values and by testing each configuration by hand.

3. Turn off all power saving and "lock a screen" features of the system.

   • Settings -> Power: Turn off "Dim screen when inactive" option.
   • Settings -> Power: Set "Blank screen" option to never.
   • Settings -> Privacy: disable screen lock.
   • Disable DPMS (Energy Start) by executing xset s off -dpms. Actually you want to execute this command on each start of the system by adding it to Startup Applications.
   • Disable suspend, according to Debian.org sudo systemctl mask sleep.target suspend.target hibernate.target hybrid-sleep.target
   • Disable a screen shield that makes you to unlock the screen when inactive for a while: https://github.com/lgpasquale/gnome-shell-extension-disable-screenshield

4. Disable crash reports, so user won't be bothered by a "crash report message" when something exceptional happens.

   Do it by setting enabled property to 0 in /etc/default/apport file.

5. Enable an on screen keyboard.

   • First you will need to install few packages, so QT applications like Firefox will have a support for touch.

     apt-get install qt-at-spi caribou
     

   • Settings -> Universal Access: Turn on "Screen Keyboard" option.

   Note: keyboard should disappear if you focus out of an input field. This does not wok in current release of qt-at-spi. It was fixed just recently https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=789038#c12

6. Show system's ip address on startup.

   I want to show system's IP address on startup so administrator can easily connect to the machine via network, so he can manage it without need of external keyboard. To do that, just create a simple script that will get an ip address and displays it as a notification bubble via notify-send application. Then add this script to Startup Applications.

   #!/bin/sh
   
   
   ip_addresses=$(ifconfig | grep -oE "inet addr:[0-9]+\.[0-9]+\.[0-9]+\.[0-9]+")
   notify-send "$ip_addresses"
   

7. Set up Firefox for kiosk mode.

   Install mKiosk plugin and configure it according to your needs.

   Install Click Drag Scroll extension so you can scroll a page by simply dragging it.

   Then add Firefox into Startup Applications.

8. Install Unclutter and hide mouse cursor.

   apt-get install unclutter
   
   unclutter -idle 0.01
   

   Or you can add it into Startup Applications.

9. Install SSH server to be able to connect to the machine remotely.

   sudo apt-get install openssh-server
   

Running Chrome in kiosk mode on Windows 10 Home

For Factorify we wanted to create a touch screen where an employees could log their attendance. We got a cheap all-in-one PC from China (PiPO X9) with pre-installed Windows 10 Home and RFID card reader.

Our application is an web page. We wanted to start an application in a browser automaticaly and to prevent users from exiting it or doing anything harmful on the PC. At least users without a keyboard.

Configuration steps:

• Create an user with limited permissions. So in case that anything goes horribly wrong he wouldn't be able to destroy the system.

  • Configure the system to automaticaly login as the newly created user. To do this you need to start a neplwiz application, select the user and disable the "users must enter a user name and password to use this computer" option.

• Then, disable the Windows shell (tiles). To do this I decided to run a "dummy" program instead of explorer.exe, on system startup.

  Go to regedit and set the value for the following path:

  HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Windows NT/CurrentVersion/Winlogon/Shell = rundll32

  • We added the value under the HKEY_CURRENT_USER because changing the value in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE would disable shell for all users using the computer.
  • Parameter Shell won't be probably present so you will need to create one.
  • Empty vaule doesn't work. So instead we execute rundll32 which actually does nothing.

• Create a task in Task Scheduler that will start Chrome browser as soon as internet connection is available. To do this, start the Task Scheduler and create a new task. Configure "start only if the following network connection is available" option.

  Then define an action:

  cmd /C "chrome --incognito --disable-pinch --kiosk http://www.factorify.me/"

  • Chrome is executed by cmd so its started as a "different" process. That is because when connection gets unavailable the Task Scheduler actually kills the process it started.
  • Parameter --incognito prevents Chrome from showing an "application crashed bubble" in case of incorrect application exit. Incognito mode is good for kiosk mode anyway.
  • --disable-pinch disallows an user to zoom the page using multi-touch gestures.

• Then fine-tune the system.

  • Disable the swipe gesture that can load a page from history. Do it by setting Chrome's chrome://flags/#overscroll-history-navigation parameter to disabled.
  • Configure an English keyboard layout so RFID reader can work properly.
  • Connect the PC to the internet.

Flaws, possible improvements:

• Disable automatic Windows updates by turning off the update service.
• PiPO X9 doesn't have any sort of internal battery. So when electricity goes off, your kiosk goes off as well. Newer version of the machine, the PiPO X10 solves the problem.
• My original plan was to use Android system for the task. PiPO X9 actually has two system preinstalled. Windows 10 and Android 4.4. Unfortunately to create a kiosk in Android older than 5.x is kind of problematic. PiPO X10 ships with Android 5.1 and that should solve the problem.
• There is a custom boot-loader that will let you chose a operating system on start of the machine. I did not manage to turn this off, so when restarted the machine will always show you system-select menu. The last started system is automatically selected after 10 seconds or so, but you have to wait.
• I did not introduce any kind of health status monitoring of the machine and applications running on it. But, one thing that comes to my mind is: you can configure the URL where Chrome will send crash reports in case of fail. That would be useful, I guess.