[ale] selective DNS server for DHCP clients?

Scott Plante splante at insightsys.com
Wed Feb 27 15:07:15 EST 2013


How tech savvy is she? If there are a few particular time-wasting sites you want to block (facebook, twitter) you could potentially just edit her C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts file and add some entries pointing to 127.0.0.1 or 192.168.0.0 or something like that. You said you couldn't install anything--not sure if you can edit a file like that. It's easy enough to override if she's savvy but it might be an easy first step before going to a network based filter. Of course if she is savvy, there are probably countless ways for her to get around all kinds of obstacles you may put up. Neighbor's wi-fi? Cell hotspot? Free VPN? 


It sounds like you're less worried about content filtering--i.e. blocking any site that contains porn, etc.--and more worried about a few particular time-sink sites. If you are interested in content filtering, you might check out DansGuardian.org. 


Scott 
----- Original Message -----

From: "Pete Hardie" <pete.hardie at gmail.com> 
To: "Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts - Yes! We run Linux!" <ale at ale.org> 
Sent: Wednesday, February 27, 2013 2:02:24 PM 
Subject: [ale] selective DNS server for DHCP clients? 



Hello all, 


After another round of disagreements concerning homework, I've determined that my daughter can't resist the lure of time-wasting Internet sites. The wrinkle is that she has a school-issued laptop, so I can't install anything on it to block access to the time-sinks. So here's what I think I can do, and I need to know if it's possible: 


I already have a DHCP server on my desktop, providing fixed IPs and a different DNS server for my ReplayTV boxen. I'd like to target her laptop's DNS to one running on my desktop, without using that one as my desktop's DNS (I can use the router) 


I also need a good tutorial on DNS servers - I have dnsmasq, which seems like it might work for my purposes - have the sites I need to block be mapped to 127.0.0.1 for her laptop, while letting the rest to resolve normally 


So is this feasible? If not, is there a good alternative? 


TIA, 




Pete Hardie 
-------- 
Better Living Through Bitmaps 
_______________________________________________ 
Ale mailing list 
Ale at ale.org 
http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale 
See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at 
http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.ale.org/pipermail/ale/attachments/20130227/1d5edb2e/attachment-0001.html>


More information about the Ale mailing list