Ask Slashdot: Keeping Your Media Library Safe From Kids?
Serenissima writes "I've spent many hours building my Media Library in XBMC and scraping all the DVD Covers and Fanart. And I love it, I can pull up movies on any computer or device in the house. I played a movie for my son the other day so I could get some cleaning done without him being underfoot. I noticed shortly after that the sound coming from the other room was from a different movie than I played for him. I snuck up and watched for a few minutes and saw him use a trackpad to navigate to the stop and play buttons of different movies in his folder. I know it's only a matter of time before he realizes he can see all of the movies. I don't want him to have nightmares because he saw the T-1000 stab someone in the face. The quickest solution I can think is a screen saver with a password. It's mildly inconvenient to me, but would stop him from accessing anything. However, I remember how much more I knew about computers than my parents when I was a kid, and I have a feeling he's going to surprise me one day. There's a lot of ways out there to stop it, the way we do it now is to not let him watch anything unless we're there (but there are only so many times I can watch the same kid's movie). How do YOU guys find yourself dealing with the convenience of running your own server while keeping your media safe from prying eyes?"
In trad slashdot style, I didn't read. Best way to do this is to keep R-rated stuff off the family tv's media playback device. Share them on a different share etc.
How about just using Linux file permissions? Keep daddy's movies in his home folder, and have the XBMC under an unprivileged user.
Don't worry. You knew more about computers than your parents. You'll also know more about computers than your children.
RTFM
Did you even attempt to find something yourself?
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
If they're smart enough to figure out how to pry through complex systems and look at daddy's files, exposure to what they see will have a self-determining effect on them. Either they'll be scared of what they saw in the "grown-up movies" and will leave it alone (and you can talk it out with him), or the kid will find something he likes and expand his horizons a bit.
You don't say how old he is, but I generally believe that you've got to let curiosity run its course for everyday sorts of things like this.
Instead of looking for a technical solution to do your job for you.
Yeah, i know. mindblowing for sure.
Kids require 24-7 supervision for about 16 years or they WILL get into something you don't like. 100% guaranteed. The only fix is doing the job you signed up for when you had a child.
the boy has the whole internet to peruse unless you have locked that down also... Seriously.. Are you actually running a walled garden ? If not all bets are off...
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
...from a NAS device. Like you, I've spent HOURS getting all the TV cataloged, named correctly, and with images. Like you, I have kids I don't want watching certain things and I solve it thusly:
1:Create a share on your NAS which has the items you DON'T want them to watch and make it so that it needs a password or whatever credentials you need to connect to it.
2:Add the share to XBMC, but put it under a Master Profile.
3: Create another Profile for your younglings that can't access the shared files. Double bonus, since you password protected the share, if they do go scanning the network, they'll have to have to know the (hopefully) different password to mount the share with your non-kid content.
4:??? Profit?
Check this out: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=108232 I think it will help you sort your media out with haste.
I know what you're thinking. Did I forward 65,535 packets or 65,536 packets?
Set and communicate the rules and the consequences for breaking them, monitor compliance, and enforce the consequences if the rules are broken. If you force compliance with technology, your son won't learn what is and isn't appropriate behavior and you won't have the opportunity to build trust. And, believe me, you'll need that trust when he's older.
Here's what I do: To keep it simple, I tag all the "bad" movies as restricted. Then on the server in each room where a movie could possibly be played, I require that the server has an "adult present" token. At first this token was just a USB stick I carried around with just a certain named file on it (no crypto). A few years ago I switched to detecting the presence of a bluetooth device - my cell phone or a few other authorized devices. The server scans for the MAC address every 30 seconds, if it can't find it 3x in a row it disables playback of restricted movies. But you can use any convenient token.
I don't use this at home but at a non-profit I run (a haunted attraction). It's got a mix of adults and teen volunteers, and we have PG-13 and R stuff in our horror video library. The system has worked rather well, but I admit the security of it is based on obscurity - that the teens don't know what enables the restricted content! If they ever figured it out, I'd switch to a secure token.
Treat your kid like an intelligent human being and implement the security measures the code has but no more. Explain to you child why but in a way that lets them weigh their own value system against their curiosity. We don't need more kids in the world that are mindless accepters of whatever is put in front of them. Allow them to make their own decisions and own the consequences for them, including nightmares.
If they break through the security, get them to show you how they did it, congratulate them, fix it and challenge them to find the next one. Turn that part into a game and you maybe able to give you child an advantage over 99% of the sheeple out there.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Can we be clear on this? Does "adult video" harm children?
Yes, it does.
I grew up with computers, and early on pressed my parents into getting me access to the Internets. I saw plenty of pixelated, low-resolution boobies and at the ripe age of thirteen, was having sexy IRC times with what appeared to be hawt nerdy college chicks.
I went on to become a systems administrator.
Parents, don't let this happen to your children. Teach them to be developers; they get paid more and don't have to wake up at 3 AM because some drunk C-level forgot his password.
did you try it
http://www.xbmchub.com/blog/2012/08/13/parental-control-for-xbmc-addons/
Keep all shares password protected with mounts/drives only available to xbmc PCs.
OP is asking how to secure media on a media server...and one of the solutions is to put them on a media server?
Well, yes, that;s not such a bad idea. Have two media servers - one open and one locked down. ;)
Perhaps a third one too
What state would the third one be in? Open and locked down at the same time? Is that the set-up that Schrodinger opted for with his media?
Why don't you just admit you don't want your wife seeing your collection of My Little Pony hentai?
You are welcome on my lawn.
The third one being the one the spouse doesn't get to see...
Buy a humongous hard drive (3Tb is good). Make a giant Truecrypt partition, like at least 1 Tera, ensuring that it's the type that can accommodate files larger than 4 gigs. (NTFS for Windows, HFS+ for OS-X)
Copy all those movies to this partition while it is mounted. Unmount it... Then just mount it again with password when needed to either watch a movie or copy new ones into the partition.
If you run out of room, make a second partition on the same disk with the same password.
All done.
I mount and unmount the various age-shares automatically via cron - that way the teenagers can't even watch movies during the day when they have other things to do - but the smallest can watch finding nemo whenever they have free time and a movie is their option. They can see the movies there (no porn in folders!) but can't play them if the source files aren't there.
Me failed English...
FreeBSD over Linux. If my comments seem odd, this may explain...
Imagine it man, Kids running around nude in Africa have more knowledge about real life than your sheltered children. They know how babies are made because they got the water from the stream and helped out with some other birth, rather than some nurse. They know of the finality and consequence of death and respect danger because they've gutted animals to help their parents cook, or even killed beasts themselves. Hell, these 3rd world kids will be giving back to their community while yours will be throwing tantrums about not getting some worthless toy -- And you're worried about censorship? Damn, seek professional help or chill, the actual fuck, out.
You didn't turn out all fucked up despite knowing so much more about computers than your parents, and seeing the things you did that your parents wouldn't have approved of. Your parents didn't even inform you about masturbation! Why are you raising your children to be so damn ignorant about the world? Look, I don't really care why. Thing is, you're a parent now, time to man up and delete the damn movies if you don't want your kid to see them, and you can't be troubled to actually learn how to fucking USE *nix file system permissions or set up accounts on a damn multi-user OS. I mean, you come HERE? Asking US?! "What would Slashdot have me do?" Well, first off I'd have you neutered, you ignorant son of a bitch (that's right, I just called your mom a bitch -- it's for not being OK with what you wanted to watch when you were a kid), then secondly I'd ship your kid to a 3rd world country where they may die, but at least they won't be brain damaged by the likes of a lamer like you!
Am I the only one who infers an extensive porno collection, lovingly curated with covers and fan art?
let's have a conversation! let me know what you think.
I'm not sure what fan art for porno movies would look like, but neither am I sure if I really want to know.
Yeah I think we all know this has nothing to do with hiding Terminator from the kids but hiding the porn from the girlfriend.
Or from mum, since this is Slashdot.