Parental Control Application LittleBrother

Overview

LittleBrother is a simple parental control application monitoring specific processes (read "games") on Linux hosts to monitor and limit the play time of (young) children. It is designed as a client server application running on several hosts and combining playing time spent across these hosts, but it also works on a standalone host.

When the application determines that a user has exceeded her play time, it will terminate the running process. Usually, the user will get several spoken notifications (using the LittleBrotherTaskbar) before she is actually kicked out so that she can log out gracefully in time.

What's New?

The latest major feature changes are:

Version	Feature/Fix	(Issue) Link
0.4.33	Support partial persistence of basic user settings on clients	Issue 190
0.4.28	Bug Fix: Remove incompatibility with Python 3.8	Issue 180
0.4.23	Optionally use iptables to restrict network access	Issue 169
0.4.20	Bug Fix: Use Python virtual environment again	Issue 170
0.4.17	Bug Fix: Remove incompatibility with new alembic version	Issue 166
0.4.16	Bug Fix: Ignore invalid hosts during ping	Issue 165
0.4.15	Bug Fix: Do not fail on Debian package upgrades	Issue 158
0.4.14	Bug Fix: Correct detection of users in master-only setups	Issue 163
0.4.12	New: Client process available as snap	Snapcraft Support
0.4.9	New: Automatic check for new versions of LittleBrother	Issue 150
	Improvement: Separate LDAP search DN for groups and users	Issue 144
	Improvement: Cache timeout for LDAP data	Issue 138
0.4.8	New: Full support for requesting optional time by users	Issue 130
0.4.4	New: Use user specific patterns to prohibit applications	Issue 129

Contact

Visit the project at Facebook or write comments to little-brother(at)web.de.

Screenshots

The following screenshots show the web frontend of LittleBrother. Click on the thumbnails to enlarge.

Change History

See here

GitHub Status

SourceForge Download Status

Continuous Integration Status Overview

Status	Master	Release
CircleCI
Test Coverage
Codacy Code Quality
Code Climate		not available
Snyk Vulnerability
Snyk Package Health	not available

Note: The vulnerability status is derived from the Python PIP packages found in requirements.txt.

Features

LittleBrother has the following features:

• Any number of users can be monitored.

• Each user can have a specific set of rules defining the permitted playtime.

• Rules can be adapted to "contexts", such as the day of the week and/or a vacation schedule (currently only the German schedules are supported).

• Play time can be restricted to a time window (from, to).

• A maximum play time per day can be defined.

• Users can be forced to take a break after a certain maximum session time.

• Users can be forced to wait for a minimum break time after their activity.

• Any number of Linux client hosts can be monitored.

• There is a master host with a history of the activities of all users. This master host checks the rule sets and prompts the client hosts to terminate processes if required.

• The master host offers a simple web interface for viewing the user activity over a configured history length (e.g. 7 days) and an administration page to dynamically define rule exceptions for a configured number of days into the future.

• The web application can be run behind a proxy so that it will be accessible from away allowing remote administration after receiving calls from young users begging for more play time.

• There is a helper application (LittleBrotherTaskbar) to display the remaining playtime of a monitored user and speak the notifications.

• The application has international language support. Currently English, Italian and German translations are provided. Users are invited to provide translations for other languages.

• Downtime of a server during playtime (e.g. due to hibernation) is automatically subtracted from the play time.

• In addition to the time spent on Linux hosts the application can also monitor activity time on other devices such as smartphones or tables. It takes advantage of the fact that most modern operating systems put devices in some kind of power saving mode while they are not being used. This way, the network response (by pinging) can be used to determine the activity on those devices. In contrast to the Linux hosts, the application will not be able to terminate the activity. The play time, however, will be added to the overall playtime and hence will have an impact on the time allowed and also on the break time rules on the Linux hosts.

• As of version 0.3.12 LittleBrother is able to use ProxyPing to ping devices behind firewalls provided the tool can be deployed on a Debian server behind the firewall.

• As of version 0.3.13 LittleBrother clients will terminate local user sessions if they cannot reach the master process for a certain time (defaults to 50 seconds). This ensures users cannot suppress being logged out by pulling the plug.

• As of version 0.4.0 LittleBrother provides an administration feature to easily extend the current computer time or grant computer when the usage would normally be prohibited. This is called a time extension. During an active extension all other restrictions (maximum time per session, time of day, and maximum time per day) are deactivated. Time extension can even extend into the next day making long night session possible. However, any computer time actually spent during a time extension will contribute to the overall time played in the course of a day.

• There is a Docker image available (currently for the client only) which makes it really easy to run a client on a Linux host with a Docker daemon available.

• The application uses voice generation to inform the user over impending logouts. Also, these spoken messages are internationalized. Optionally, users can be notified using four different popup tools. Note that this functionality of the LittleBrother application has been replaced by the LittleBrotherTaskbar.

Architecture

The page gives a detailed description of the architecture of the application.

Tested Distributions

So far, LittleBrother has only been released as a Debian package. For other non-Debian based distributions there is some basic support using a generic installation script. See this page for details.

Distribution	Version	Architecture	Comments	Most Recent Test
Ubuntu	20.04	amd64	This version is used as base image for the Ubuntu Docker image	28.JAN.2022
Debian	11 (bullseye)	amd64	Feedback from a user as regular install using Mate desktop	06.MAR.2022
Ubuntu	18.10	amd64	See pip3 issue	03.JUN.2019
Debian	buster	amd64	The version buster-slim is used as base image for the Debian Docker image	01.JAN.2020
Debian	10.3 (buster)	amd64	Feedback from a user as regular install with Mate desktop	05.MAR.2020
Mint	19	amd64		03.JAN.2020
Arch Linux		amd64	See https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/little-brother	06.MAR.2022
Debian	stretch	armv6l		23.MAY.2020
Alpine	v3.13	amd64	This distribution is used as base image for the Alpine Docker Image	06.MAR.2022

Quick Install (Snap)

There is a snap available for the client process. See snap-little-brother for details.

Quick Install (Debian Package)

This guide will take you through the steps required to install, configure, and run the LittleBrother application on your system. This guide works both for master and client setups. For setting up a client there is a second option using Docker. See the Docker page for more details.

YouTube Videos

Thumbnail and Link to Video	Duration	Content	Related Versions
	16 min	Install LittleBrother Debian package, edit configuration file, add user, test functionality	LittleBrother 0.3.1 on Ubuntu 19.3
	14 min	Install LittleBrotherTaskbar pip3 package, register desktop service, test functionality	LittleBrotherTaskbar 0.1.9 on Ubuntu 19.3

Download the Software

The application is available as a Debian package from the release directory at SourceForge. The latest build is available from the master directory. Install it as you would install any other Debian package with

dpkg -i PACKAGE.deb
apt-get install -f

Note that the second command is required to install missing dependencies since dpkg does not run a dependency check. Instead, it will return with an error which will then be "fixed" by apt-get.

After installation use

systemctl start little-brother

to start the application right away. The application will successfully start up provided that the default port 5555 is available on the host. You can check the success by trying to log into the web frontend.

Configuring the Application (Mostly Optional)

The default setup will fit most first-time users (except for the password). The following table contains various additional aspects that may require additional configuration.

Aspect	Default Setting	Alternatives	Reference
Admin Password	User admin with password test123	Use LDAP for authentication and authorization	See "Setting Admin Password" below
Database backend	File oriented database sqlite	Full fledged database such as MySQL dor MariaDB	See Advanced Configuration
Web frontend port	5555	Any other available port	See Advanced Configuration
Web frontend base URL	/	Any other path	See Advanced Configuration
User registry	/etc/passwd	Predefined users and UIDs or LDAP registry	See Advanced Configuration
Master client setup	Use only a master host	Use any number of client hosts	See Advanced Configuration
Mapping UIDs	UIDs are synchronized across all hosts	Each host (group) can have different UIDs	See Advanced Configuration
Scanning Interval	Every 5 seconds	Any other interval	See Advanced Configuration
Reverse proxy setup	No reverse proxy	Run little-brother behind a reverse proxy (e.g. nginx)	See Advanced Configuration
Docker Support	Client is installed as Debian package	Client is run as Docker container	See Docker.
Prometheus Support	Not activated	Activate Prometheus server port and provide run time statistics	See Operational Monitoring.
Network Tempering Detection	Automatic logout of monitored users after a network downtime of 50 seconds	Set a different time out	See Advanced Configuration
Firewall support	Do not restrict network access of client hosts	Configure targets IP addresses to be blocked	See Advanced Configuration

Setting the Admin Password

For the time being setting the admin password is the only standard configuration that still requires using an editor. See this issue. You have to be root to follow these steps (e.g. use sudo):

• Use your favorite editor to edit the file /etc/little-brother/little-brother.conf.

• Find the setting admin_password in the section [UnixUserHandler].

• Change the password.

• Save the file.

• Restart the application by issuing:

  systemctl restart little-brother 
  

From now on the new password will have to be used to access the administration pages.

Using the Web-Frontend

You are all set now. It's time to set up users to be monitored and optionally devices. See the Web Frontend Manual.

Troubleshooting

So, you went through all the above but LittleBrother does not seem to work? Maybe this troubleshooting page can help you.

Caveats

The application LittleBrother is far from perfect. Some major caveats are listed here and/or in the issue list on GitHub (see here).

• Every once in a while processes fail to terminate even though they have been killed by LittleBrother. In these cases the user will still be regarded as logged in although he/she is not. Usually this can only be solved by trying to kill the processes again using the master user. Database eloquent users may try to delete/correct the incorrect process time entries.

• The web server only responds to HTTP requests. This is probably always OK for communication between the clients and the master in local area network. If the master host is to be accessible from the internet, it should be put behind a reverse proxy handling the HTTPS termination (see below).

Internationalization

The application uses the PIP package Flask-Babel to provide internationalization for the web frontend. Currently, the following languages are supported or in preparation (in the order they were made available):

Flag	Language	Locale	Status	Translation provided by
	English	en	Up-to-date	Marcus Rickert
	German	de	Up-to-date	Marcus Rickert
	Italian	it	Revision 116	Albano Battistella
	Dutch	nl	Revision 63	Simone & Lex
	Finnish	fi	Revision 63	Isakkii Kosonen
	French	fr	Revision 86	Albano Battistella
	Turkish	tr	Revision 63	Selay Dogan
	Russian	ru	Revision 63	J. Moldawski
	Japanese	ja	Revision 63	Arik M.
	Bangla	bn	Revision 63	Rownak Jyoti Zaman
	Thai	th	Revision 63	Busaba Kramer
	Danish	da	Revision 63	Erik Husmark
	Spanish	es	Revision 63	Ruth Wucherpfennig-Krömer
	Croatian	hr	Revision 63	Incognito
	Lithuanian	lt	In preparation	N.N.

A revision number in the status column denotes that all texts up to that revision have been localized.

Your help with translations is greatly appreciated. Please, contact the author if you are interested in providing a translation. You do not necessarily have to clone this repository or be familiar with Python to do so.

Credits

• Thanks to all the people maintaining the wonderful script language Python and the libraries on PyPi.

• The country flags were taken from www.countryflags.com.

• See the section about on internationalization for credits regarding the translations.

• The site www.mehr-schulferien.de maintains the vacation metadata for Germany.

• The icons are provided by fontawesome.com.

• People contributing by providing pull requests:

  • Bas Hulsken
    • See issue 120
    • See issue 166
  • Albano Battistella for providing Italian and French translations