snarl

When { stuff_happens(); tell_me() } http://fullphat.github.io/snarl/

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System Administration Guide

Info Note that this documentation applies to Snarl R5.0 Beta 6 and later.

Introduction

Snarl provides system administrators with granular control over how local installations can be configured and secured against unauthorised change. Individual installations of Snarl can be controlled via a single configuration files stored on a web server. The web server will typically be within the same corporate environment, but it need not be.

Info This document is aimed at system administrators in corporate or educational environments who wish to control access to deployed instances of Snarl running on multiple computers.

Overview

The Configuration Files

redirect.rc

This is used to redirect Snarl to a remote configuration file. Using remote configuration files is preferred as :

If provided, redirect.rc should contain the following:

[targets]
url=..path to configuration file..

path to configuration file must be a fully-qualified URL to the configuration file to use, for example http://myserver/snarl/finance_team/admin.json.

Info To avoid user interference with redirect.rc, administrators should ensure that users only have read access to this file on their computer.

Sysadmin

This file details which features of Snarl are to be restricted. It can either be located on a remote webserver or it can be included in the same folder as Snarl itself. If it’s located in the same folder as Snarl it must be called sysadmin.json.

Unlike redirect.rc, this configuration file must be formatted as JSON.

The following settings are currently available:

HideIcon bool Controls whether the Snarl icon is displayed in the System Tray.
InhibitPrefs bool Controls whether the Snarl management server can be accessed from the menu
InhibitMenu bool Controls whether or not the menu appears when the user right-clicks on the Snarl System Tray icon
InhibitQuit bool Controls whether or not Snarl can be stopped by the user. Enabling this option will prevent the user from closing Snarl via the System Tray Menu and most other methods but it does not protect the Snarl.exe process from being terminated via, for example, Task Manager.

Some points to note:

Example Configuration File

{
    "HideIcon": false,
    "InhibitPrefs": true,
}

Worked Example

To try this out, do the following: