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Every now and then I would like to give my home desktop or laptop to someone to check their mails or lookup something on the web while I am not watching them. I am using Debian 6 (squeeze) and was looking for a more clever solution than just creating an account for them and delete it afterwards.

Can someone please point me to a Debian package or a step-by-step instruction to setup a non-persistent account for a graphical session that a logged on user can create by some clicks? The account should be deleted from the system at next reboot or so. I am currently using GDM, but open to KDM or lightDM.

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Just a shot in the dark here but wouldn't creating a user called guest whose $HOME points to /tmp/guest be enough? The contents of /tmp are cleaned out on each reboot (depending on your settings but regulalry in any case).

Unless someone knows why it is a horrible idea, it should at least be worth a try:

sudo useradd -mb /tmp/ guest
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  • I went with this solution in the end. Since I did not want the user to logon through ssh, I set its shell to /bin/false. I also added the full-name that is used by gdm: sudo useradd -mb /tmp -s /bin/false -c "Welcome Guest" guest; passwd guest
    – wigy
    Jan 9, 2013 at 19:24
  • I would also add sudo passwd -d guest so that anyone can log in without the hassle of entering a password (which is the use case of a guest account most of the time). Works on a Wheezy Stable.
    – John Christopher
    Apr 1, 2014 at 11:36
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All I can offer are some ideas that still need more work:

  • Create a normal account with the right permissions where "/home/guest" is on a ramdisk so it gets refreshed on every boot
  • Add a line that cleans "/home/guest" in the session script
  • Bravely try to compile the Ubuntu gdm-guest-session package into Debian
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  • The first 2 ideas seem to be simple enough. You need a password for the guest user that is shared with all the users on the machine who will give it to a guest, otherwise it is perfect. The 3rd option would be ideal, but I do not have the time nowadays to port the Ubuntu package to Debian. I will try the 2nd option and give you feedback.
    – wigy
    Jan 6, 2013 at 8:46
  • Thanks, but the command-line of @terdon got me in minutes to a solution with the same compromise that your first 2 ideas. Anyways, thanks for your kind help.
    – wigy
    Jan 9, 2013 at 19:35
  • Yes, I am a bit disgusted that I omitted /tmp above.
    – harrymc
    Jan 10, 2013 at 12:25

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