Internet Cafe Timer App?

#1

Hello Endless Team,

Do you have a simple internet cafe timer app?

I am using handy cafe timer in my shop with windows os and I really like to use endless os if we have a simple timer app close to this.

This is my setup under windows os:
I have a server pc and 12 client pcs. After start up of the client pcs, it automatically shows a lock screen which can be unlocked by the server pc showing the real time used and amount.

No doubt of completely using Endless OS in my cafe even if i manually monitor the time :slight_smile:. But i will be grateful if you can provide me with explicit instructions for a simple timer for my cafe.

Best Regards.

Romeo B. Mangaccat Jr.
Maddela Digiprint@net
Maddela, Quirino
Philippines
+63 9178551509

1 Like
#2

Hi Romeo,

First of all, it’s awesome to know that Endless is being used in your internet cafe! Thank you for sharing that with us. We love knowing more about how our users are using Endless.

I remember seeing your post on our Google Group and know Roddy responded about a script you could use. I’ll add it here since the Google Group is closing soon:

One relatively simple thing you could do is to SSH into the machine and then run the last command to see details of the most recent logins.

For example, to see details on the last 5 logins for the shared user, you could run the following:

last -R shared | head -5

Here is an example of the output on my laptop (the “1+” means “one day plus…”, the rest is in “hours:minutes”):

$ last -R roddy | head -8
roddy :0 Sun Sep 25 07:36 still logged in
roddy :0 Sat Sep 24 08:06 - 23:33 (15:27)
roddy :0 Thu Sep 22 15:05 - 00:07 (1+09:02)
roddy :0 Wed Sep 21 14:26 - 15:03 (1+00:37)
roddy :0 Tue Sep 20 08:46 - 14:26 (1+05:39)
roddy :0 Tue Sep 20 08:25 - 08:46 (00:20)
roddy :0 Mon Sep 19 22:29 - 23:27 (00:58)
roddy :0 Mon Sep 19 10:19 - 15:51 (05:32)

If this would work for you, let me know if you need more explicit instructions on setting up remote access or how to script this to make it easier to run.

As Roddy said, unfortunately, we do not have a cafe timer app right now. I’ll see if he has any other suggestions on how to make this easier. If not, this may be the best solution we have right now.

It’d be great to see if others are using Endless in internet cafes and see if they have any suggestions or things for us to consider as well. Thank you again for sharing this use case with us!

1 Like
#3

Hi, Romeo.

I’ll take some time next week to test out my idea and provide explicit instructions.

Roddy

1 Like
#4

hi! @nuritzi @roddy

let me introduce myself first. I’m John Vincent Fiel, Senior Python Developer of Bai Web and Mobile Lab https://bai.ph, a started company situated here in the Philippines. I saw Endless OS in Facebook, I got interested about it because it is based from linux. I actually own several internet cafe here in the Philippines also, and I’m using Xubuntu on my clients and server. I developed my own Internet Cafe Timer App which I’m using for several years already.

I like what Endless OS team said about “We have a different target user. Most desktop Linux distributions are oriented towards tech-savvy users and developers.”, because I was able to come-up with my Xubuntu Desktop Tweaks where not-so-tech users can easily use.

I’ll study Endless OS first, and might contribute some App maybe sometime, because as of the moment I’m a bit busy on building up our products in our startup company. By the way your computers looks cool :slight_smile:

3 Likes
#5

Hi @jvfiel, that’s really cool that you developed your own Internet Cafe Timer App! We appreciate your considering porting it to Flatpak so that others can use it on Endless. Please let us know if you have any questions or how we might be able to support you!

We’d also love to hear what you think as you explore Endless, especially around usability, so feel free to post in the #en:feedback section whenever you get a chance. Thank you!

#6

Hi, John. That would be great if you would be interested in contributing your internet cafe timer app!

In the meantime, here are some instructions if anyone wants to use ssh to remotely monitor the session durations on a remote client machine…

First, you need to enable remote access on the client machine:

  • Log in user your administrative account
  • User menu (lower-left corner) --> Settings --> Sharing
  • Turn the switch on the Sharing top bar to ON
  • Specify a unique Computer Name
  • Click on Remote Login and set the switch to ON
  • Enter the password for your administrative account
  • Log out of your administrative account

Now, on your management computer, assuming it is also running Endless (or any Linux distro):

  • Open the terminal (e.g., go to the desktop and search for “term” and then click on the “Terminal” application)
  • Type the following – I’m going to assume your administrative account is named “admin_name”, and you want to monitor the last 5 sessions of the “shared” account on a computer named “client_machine” (note the need for the “.local” after the computer name):
    ssh admin_name@client_machine.local -C last -R shared | head -5
  • Enter the password for your administrative account

If you don’t want to have to enter your password every time, you can generate an ssh key on your management computer with the following command:
ssh-keygen -t rsa

And then add the contents of ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on the client machine, for example with the following command:
ssh admin_name@client_machine.local -C mkdir -p ~/.ssh
scp ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub admin_name@client_machine.local:~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Roddy

2 Likes
#7