Have you had a look at the new Kiosk Mode in SRS4 0907 (aka SRS4u2)? The thing you notice right away is it's really different from our old friend CAM. I really liked the things we were able to do with CAM and wanted to begin to learn to replicate those in Kiosk Mode.
I like to set up the environment for my scripts in a single script that is sourced from each script in the package. Learned that trick from Brad Lackey's TSAffinity work. So I asked my buds if I could use KIOSK_SESSION_PRE for that purpose so it would be sourced automatically for me. I got great information from Joerg Barfurth so I thought I'd pass it along. Here's what he said:
KIOSK_SESSION_PRE runs as root during the session preparation phase.
You can't set variables here that are inherited by KIOSK_SESSION_EXEC,
except by creating a .profile-style file, which your session script
then sources.
KIOSK_SESSION_PRE can be used to do pre-session setup which needs
additional privilege, e.g special home directory setup, set file
permissions, start per-session daemons etc. If you need a 'pre' script that is sourced within the session context,
so that you can inherit environment, you can easily source such a script
yourself within your KIOSK_SESSION_EXEC script. You can use a fixed
script in a well-known location (e.g. put it into KIOSK_SESSION_DIR
[/etc/opt/SUNWkio/sessions/<session-name>] or next to your session
script). Or if you need to have a script that can be modified for each
user, source it from $HOME.
On the other hand, if you need something done with privileges (e.g. create per-session
data that is write-protected for the kiosk user) for session
preparation, you could not (easily) do it on your own.
KIOSK_SESSION_POST can be used to clean up the things set up by
KIOSK_SESSION_PRE.
If I wanted to use the .profile approach, I suppose I could create a .profile-$USER, but where to put it? Is $USER's $HOME created at the point where KIOSK_SESSION_PRE is executed? I would think that to be ideal as it will go away for sure
when $USER's session is destroyed without having to worry about a
KIOSK_SESSION_POST to clean it up.
Again from Joerg:
All of $USER, $HOME, $KIOSK_SESSION_DIR are set when the PRE and
POST scripts are run.
But then you have the issue of how/when to create the .profile-$USER. That sounded messy so I looke at another approach. Put a .profile in the prototype directory for the
session type then source it in the KIOSK_SESSION_EXEC. It would get copied into the Kiosk user's $HOME by the session startup and I could source it from $HOME. Sounded good to me. I asked Joerg how that would play:
You really only need to copy it into place, if you do per-session
customization. For a fixed script, simply put it into a well-known place
and source it from there.
A well-known place? Where would that be? Has to be protected from future patches, etc; not interfere with any other Kiosk Mode functionality and so forth. Joerg had said earlier:
You can use a fixed
script in a well-known location (e.g. put it into KIOSK_SESSION_DIR
[/etc/opt/SUNWkio/sessions/<session-name>] or next to your session
script).
OK, I'm good with that. My new standard will be:
/etc/opt/SUNWkio/sessions/mysession.conf is the session descriptor which points to ....
/etc/opt/SUNWkio/sessions/mysession/my_exec.sh is the my main Kiosk Mode script which sources ...
/etc/opt/SUNWkio/sessions/mysession/my_env.sh is the script to build the environment
One note that I learned the hard way: the directory name you use for you scripts and the name of the .conf file must be the same and they must be the same case. DUH! this is *nix isn't it!?! Well I overlooked that and spent an afternoon figuring it out.
Do yourself a favor and grab a copy of the manpage.pdf with the bookmarks that Brad created, it is SUPER handy and not very big. You can find it here.
