How to install CTparental parental control software on Debian 10

CTparental is a free and open source parental control tool for controlling computer use or Internet browsing. It comes with a simple and easy-to-use web interface supported by the Lighttpd web server. The idea of CTparental tool comes from other tools such as iptables, dnsmasq and inguardian privoxy.

feature

Use blacklist or whitelist to filter content
Support Firefox, Midori and Chrome
Filter sites by category
Allow to set the user’s maximum browsing time
Control the active time of computer sessions
Mandatory Safe Search for duckduckgo and Google

In this article, we will show you how to install CTparental on Debian 10.

prerequisites

A system running Debian 10 desktop.
The root password is configured on the server.

getting Started

First, update the system software package to a newer version by running the following command:

apt-get update -y

After all packages have been updated, you can proceed to the next step.

Install CTparental

By default, CTparental is not included in the Debian 10 default repository. Therefore, you need to download it from the GitLab website.

You can download it with the following command:

wget -c https://gitlab.com/marsat/CTparental/uploads/d5567eb1a43ffde679193bce87be5f69/ctparental_debian10_lighttpd_4.44.18-1.0_all.deb

After the download is complete, use the following command to install the downloaded file:

dpkg -i ctparental_debian10_lighttpd_4.44.18-1.0_all.deb

If you encounter any dependency errors, run the following command to install all required dependencies:

apt-get install -f

During the installation process, you will be asked to set up an administrator user as follows:

Provide your username and click enter. The system will ask you to set a password for the administrator user, as shown below:

Set password

Provide your password and click enter finish installation.

Once all dependencies are installed, you can verify the CTparental installation using the following command:

apt-cache show ctparental

You should get the following output:

Package: ctparental
Status: install ok installed
Priority: optional
Section: utils
Installed-Size: 2568
Maintainer: marsat <[email protected]>
Architecture: all
Version: 4.44.18-1.0
Depends: debconf (>= 0.5) | debconf-2.0, debconf, dnsmasq, lighttpd, sudo, wget, php-cgi, php-xml, libnotify-bin, notification-daemon, nftables, rsyslog, e2guardian, privoxy, openssl, libnss3-tools, console-data, dnsutils, whiptail, ifupdown2 | ifupdown, rsync, openssh-server
Conflicts: dansguardian
Conffiles:
 /etc/CTparental/CTparental.conf c423d608fbc18de0512efb68c4fdcaf6
 /etc/CTparental/dist.conf 61085f21f8656cc10a30da6759d8154c
Description: Controle parental.
 Filtrage web basé sur dnsmasq, e2guardian, privoxy, lighttpd , systemd timer et nftables
 une gestion des horaires de connection est aussi intégrée et
 une interface web (http://admin.ct.local) permettant de paramétrer tous ça.
 Le couple login mot de passe doit être saisi à l'install, mais peut être
 modifié par la suite grâce à la commande CTparental.sh -uhtml.
Description-md5: 26847a28b1b9824d5d1994ca6224ffe0
Homepage: https://gitlab.com/marsat/CTparental

Set up the host file

CTparental is now installed and listening on ports 80 and 443 on 127.0.0.11 and 127.0.0.10. CTparental runs on the Lighttpd web server and uses the domains admin.ct.local and privet.ct.local to create configuration files. Therefore, you will need to edit the /etc/hosts file and bind both domain names with the listening IP.

nano /etc/hosts

Add the following line:

127.0.0.11 admin.ct.local 
127.0.0.10 privet.ct.local

Save and close the file when you are done.

Enter CTparental

Now, open your web browser and use the URL to access the CTparental web interface. https://admin.ct.local.You should see the CTparental login page: ad

Provide your administrator username and password, and click log in Button. You should see the CTparental dashboard on the following page:

CTparental dashboard

in conclusion

Congratulations! You have successfully installed CTparental on Debian 10 Desktop. Now, you can use CTparental to control computer usage and Internet surfing.

Source