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Administering a PC in a Vacation Rental Home?
mrn121 asks: "Some relatives of mine are preparing their beach house for rental, and they have asked me to assist in setting up some of the on-site technology. One of my ideas was to add a computer with high-speed internet access to the house, but security issues may be overwhelming. I have administered campus computing labs in the past, so I am familiar with locking systems down, but I am curious about what level of security readers might suggest, and how to go about achieving an appropriate balance between security and usability for such an application. On one hand, I don't want renters to clutter the computer with software and useless bookmarks, but on the other hand, I don't want the system to be utterly useless. One major difference between this computer and a lab computer is that I will not have access to the machine for the entire summer, while the house is being rented."
All fine, until that removable drive removes itself from the house.
What do you mean you 'won't have access' to it for the summer. Just use one of the remote desktop systems if it's a Windows box or -better yet- if you set it up as a Linux box you can just SSH into it. If the dynamic IP is an issue, register a free dynamic hostname at (for example) dyndns.org and install the IP auto-updater. That way you can just ssh to 'beach-house.dyndns.org'.
As others have suggested, create limited user accounts. Make sure they've got all they need for web surfing, movie watching, music and so on, and lock everything else down, and just leave them a limited-space directory to save stuff into. If you're afraid they may need more software, just create a crap e-mail account for 'support requests' and use the remote desktop/ssh with admin privileges to install new software if you deem it to be ok.
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
I think it is fairly safe to assume that it being a vacation rental, presumably not in a resort community for programmers, that choices #1-5 will be windows 9x+, #6 might be mac OS X, with linux battling it out at #7 with windows 3.1. I am not trying to be all anti-linux here, but this is a vacation setting, you want to keep people as happy and comfortable as possible, not completely shatter some average guy's self perception of computer literacy.
As for protecting what damage the computer can do to the rest of the world, there are also easy OS agnostic solutions you did not realize- mainly a firewall. blocking all outgoing/ingoing ports except port 80 should keep anyone protected. Unless someone needs VPN access to their job, it is reasonable to only restrict them to the web. Yeah if someone knowledgable really wants to get around the system, they can... but who really rents a vacation house when they can go to a library. Its all about being reasonable- He probably has no idea who he is going to be renting to either... There is a threat of an axe murderer renting it and burying bodies in the basement, does that mean you recommend putting video surveilence down there?
Your idea of screening tenants to see what computer background they have is silly. hes renting a vacation house with a computer, not a computer with a vacation house.
It is posts like this that really make me want a (-1, stick up ass) moderation.
When preparing a property in Tobago, between the beach and the golf course on a tropical paradise, for holiday rentals, a friend was required by the letting agents to supply a television for each bedroom and the lounge. Four rooms, four separate televisions. Apparently American holidaymakers can't do without. After that blow to my faith in humanity, one computer doesn't sound so bad.
I guess different people have different ideas of what they like to do when they're on vacation. For me, it means getting away from the normal routine and not being such a geek for a few days. To each his own.Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?