Fwd: [libreoffice-users] Restrict file dialog view to specific folders

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: JWC <hville.lion@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 9:26 AM
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Restrict file dialog view to specific
folders
To: Brian Barker <b.m.barker@btinternet.com>


Sorry for the very delayed response on this note.  Was going back and
cleaning out my email.

I work on a system where the regular user does not have ready access to the
underlying filesystem.  Essentially they are using the system in kiosk
mode.  We want the user to only have the ability to open files from their
home folder, but no where else for security reasons.  We don't want them to
be able to browse around to other folders outside their home folder.  We
tried resolving the issue using SELinux but it's not a complete solution,
because if we make SELinux too restrictive then LibreOffice breaks.  This
is probably related to lack of expertise in writing SELinux policy.  At any
rate, we thought finding a way to restrict LibreOffice to only have the
ability to view their home folder would be a more expedient solution.  This
would probably involve making code changes, but we haven't delved into that
because we don't want to have to maintain those changes for future updates
to LibreOffice.  Thanks for your help,

-Will Crisp

On Fri, Jul 11, 2014 at 1:29 AM, Brian Barker <b.m.barker@btinternet.com>
wrote:

> At 17:38 10/07/2014 -0500, you wrote:
>
> > Is there a way to restrict the LibreOffice Writer "Save As", "Open" file
> > dialog window so that it only allows users to look in specific folders on a
> > system. Specifically I'm trying to prevent the user from viewing the
> > contents of /usr and other related system folders.
>
> I'm not sure this makes particular sense. Surely if you made such a
> restriction within LibreOffice, users would be able to view the contents of
> such folders using other functionality, notably that of the operating
> system itself.
>
> o If document files of appropriate types are "associated" with LibreOffice
> in your operating system - as you would no doubt wish - a user could
> double-click a document in the operating system's display with the effect
> of opening it in LibreOffice.
>
> o If users wanted to, they could copy a file from a folder to somewhere
> LibreOffice could access and then open it from there.
>
> o Similarly, a user could save a document from LibreOffice in a permitted
> folder and then use the operating systems' facilities to copy it to te
> reserved folder.
>
> Doesn't this all mean that the only way to achieve anything useful would
> be to use your operating system's facilities - not LibreOffice's - to
> control which folders can be viewed, modified, read from, written to and so
> on?
>
> I trust this helps.
>
> Brian Barker - privately

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