<SOLVED> Adding a guest account to Mate

[Undara]

I am a volunteer installing five Linux Mint 17.1, Mate, 64 bit computers at a homeless facility. The PCs will be used primarily for "public" Internet access. I created a Guest account on each computer by installing LightDM and following the instructions from https://sites.google.com/site/easylinux ... -Mint-17.1.

Other than some display corruption during log-in, the guest account works well. The problem I have is that after some time of no use, the screen locks and there is no way to unlock because there is no password. “Switch user” does not work. The only way to regain control is to reboot. If the user had saved anything to the hard drive with intentions of moving the data to a memory stick before logging out, the data would be lost. The user would not be able to safely lock the computer for a break.

I have been using Linux Mint for over a year but mostly with the GUI. I can follow institutions for using the terminal. Any help will be appreciated.

[Cardenio]

Since nobody has helped you yet, I'll give it a shot.

You can do it all through the GUI, no need to use command line on this. I use Xfce, so it isn't exactly the same, I started out on MATE, but cannot remember exactly how to do it on MATE.

Here is how it is done through the GUI on Xfce: MATE will be very similar.

If I remember right, click on the "all settings" button on the left side of the start menu.

Look for something similar to "session & startup". Within "session & startup" look for "lock screen before sleep" and uncheck it.

Now look in the start menu under "system" for "users & groups" or "user settings".

Find the guest user account and set it to "password not asked on logon".

[Cardenio]

Another thing, if you use the screensaver [I don't], I think you have to disable the screen locker from there too while you're at it.

[Undara]

The article I used to create the guest account goes on to tell how to set up a ghost account with the default settings you want in the guest account and how to transfer the settings to the guest account. It didn't occur to me that I could use this to turn off the screen lock. I'll change settings in the ghost account to turn off automatic screen locking and may remove access to system tools, preferences, ect. Thank you, Carlendo, for nudging me toward a solution.