Files

T

ekklesiaandClaude Opus 5 0b2f99a853 feat: make Chrome a room appliance rather than somebody's browser

A classroom computer is shared. There is one local Chrome profile owned
by the room, teachers sign into websites, and nobody signs into Chrome.

BrowserSignin=0 stops Chrome asking who is using it, with SyncDisabled
set explicitly alongside it so the intent is in the file rather than
implied. BrowserAddPersonEnabled=false stops new profiles and
ProfilePickerOnStartupAvailability=1 stops the picker.

BrowserGuestModeEnabled=false is the answer to the other profile
switching entry point. Guest is the one that survives disabling add
person, and turning it off is the supported mechanism rather than hiding
UI. Guest is not the browsing model: the room needs one persistent
profile so the church YouTube login survives.

CookiesSessionOnlyForUrls scoped to [*.]wonderink.org, which covers
app.wonderink.org and every other subdomain, so a teacher's Wonder Ink
session does not outlive them. BackgroundModeEnabled was already false,
which is what lets a session actually end.

Every policy name was checked against the strings of the installed
Chrome 152 binary, with deliberately invalid names as a control so the
check is known to discriminate.

Two things are recorded honestly in docs/browser.md rather than claimed.
The avatar button stays in the toolbar — screenshotted with and without
these policies, it is in the same place either way; what changes is that
nothing behind it can create or switch a profile, and no Chrome 152
policy removes the button. And whether session-only cookies actually
sign Wonder Ink out is unverified: it needs a real Wonder Ink login,
which this machine does not have, and three attempts to prove the
mechanism against a local site were inconclusive because the positive
control never worked. The endpoint procedure to settle it, including how
to tell a cookie session from a localStorage one, is written down.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <[email protected]>

2026-09-05 08:27:16 -05:00

5.3 KiB

Raw Blame History

The classroom browser

A classroom computer is a shared appliance, not somebody's laptop. There is one local Chrome profile, owned by the room. Teachers sign into websites; nobody signs into Chrome.

Policies

All of these are in /etc/opt/chrome/policies/managed/ekklesia-classroom.json, and every name was checked against the strings of the installed Chrome 152 binary with deliberately invalid names as a control.

Policy	Value	Why
`BrowserSignin`	`0`	Chrome never asks who is using it
`SyncDisabled`	`true`	Explicit, though `BrowserSignin: 0` implies it
`SigninInterceptionEnabled`	`false`	No "this account is managed" bubble
`BrowserAddPersonEnabled`	`false`	No new Chrome profiles
`BrowserGuestModeEnabled`	`false`	Removes the Guest entry point from the profile menu
`ProfilePickerOnStartupAvailability`	`1`	No profile picker at startup
`PasswordManagerEnabled`	`false`	No offers to save passwords
`PasswordLeakDetectionEnabled`	`false`	No leak warnings
`BackgroundModeEnabled`	`false`	Closing the last window really ends the session
`CookiesSessionOnlyForUrls`	`["[*.]wonderink.org"]`	Wonder Ink should not outlive a teacher
`DefaultBrowserSettingEnabled`	`false`	No default-browser prompt
`PromotionalTabsEnabled`	`false`	No welcome tabs
`MetricsReportingEnabled`	`false`	—
`ShowHomeButton`	`true`	One obvious way back
`HomepageLocation`	Wonder Ink	—
`HomepageIsNewTabPage`	`false`	—

BrowserGuestModeEnabled: false is the answer to "other profile switching entry points". Guest mode is the one that survives BrowserAddPersonEnabled: false, and disabling it is the supported mechanism — no UI hacks. Guest mode is not used as the browsing model: the room needs one persistent profile so the church YouTube login survives.

None of this touches website logins. Wonder Ink, Google and YouTube sign-ins are ordinary site sessions and are unaffected by BrowserSignin: 0, which governs signing in to the browser.

What the policies do not remove

The avatar button stays in the toolbar. Verified by screenshotting Chrome with these policies applied and comparing against Chrome without them: the button is in the same place either way.

What changes is what is behind it. Sign-in, adding a profile and Guest mode are all disabled by policy, so the menu has nothing left that creates or switches a profile. Chrome 152 has no policy that removes the button itself — ProfileSwitcherEnabled and similar names do not exist, checked against the binary — and hiding it would mean the UI hacks this is meant to avoid.

Worth a look at the endpoint: open that menu once and confirm it offers nothing actionable.

Wonder Ink between teachers — NOT YET VERIFIED

The intent: teacher A signs in, uses the room, Chrome closes, teacher B opens Chrome and Wonder Ink is signed out — while YouTube stays signed into the church account.

CookiesSessionOnlyForUrls with [*.]wonderink.org is the official policy for that, and that pattern covers app.wonderink.org and every other subdomain. Whether it is sufficient has not been established.

It could not be tested here. Confirming it needs a real Wonder Ink login, which this machine does not have, and three attempts to prove the mechanism against a local test site were inconclusive — the positive control never worked, so the negative results mean nothing. Rather than report a guess as a result: unverified.

Two things must be checked at the endpoint before anyone relies on it.

1. Is the session in cookies at all?

CookiesSessionOnlyForUrls clears cookies. A single-page app like Wonder Ink may keep its token in localStorage instead, which that policy does not promise to touch.

Cookies under https://app.wonderink.org — is there a session or auth cookie?
Local Storage and IndexedDB for the same origin — is there a token there?

Then the real test: close every Chrome window, confirm the process is gone (pgrep -x chrome returns nothing), reopen, and see whether Wonder Ink is still signed in.

If it is still signed in, the session is not in cookies, and there is no per-site Chrome policy that clears localStorage on exit. ClearBrowsingDataOnExitList and BrowsingDataLifetime both exist in Chrome 152 but are global, not per-site — and blanket clearing is exactly what must not happen here, because it would take YouTube with it. That case needs a small classroom-owned cleanup instead, which has deliberately not been built on speculation.

app.wonderink.org loads Google Identity Services (accounts.google.com/gsi/client), so Google sign-in is at least offered.

If teachers sign into Wonder Ink through Google, clearing wonderink.org will sign them out of Wonder Ink — but the Google session at accounts.google.com is deliberately kept, because that is what keeps YouTube Premium signed in. The next teacher could then be one click from re-entering the previous teacher's Wonder Ink account.

These two requirements genuinely conflict, and which one applies depends on how teachers actually sign in. Worth knowing before Sunday. If teachers use Wonder Ink email-and-password accounts, there is no conflict at all.

5.3 KiB Raw Blame History