Installation and Configuration

Configuration explained

Contents

Overview

The configuration of Net Responsibility (NR) refers to user-specific settings that enable the program to run on a particular computer system. Before you install NR you need to register an account on the website, if you haven't done so already. The information you enter during registration will be used during the NR install process to do the initial configuration on your computer system in order for it to work properly.

The configuration information is stored on the website and is periodically downloaded by NR as needed. To manually configure NR by downloading the configuration information you can run the following command in a terminal window:

sudo net-responsibility -c

Note: If you are not an Ubuntu/Debian user, you may need to change sudo to su. The main thing to know is that the net-responsibility command needs to be run as 'root', however your particular platform handles that.

Configuration parts

During and/or after the NR registration process (which is all done online at the NR website), you will have the opportunity to specify certain settings for the following parts of the program's configuration.

Name, password, etc.

Here you will choose a username and password, which you will use to log in on the website (i.e. to change your settings, write forum posts, etc.), and which you may also need to use on your computer (i.e., when you first install NR, or when you manually configure NR). Your password is only saved on the NR website, where it is used to verify your user identity. You will need to enter your password a second time, just to doublecheck that you've created the password you intended. You will also need to enter your name or you can enter an alias, as long as your accountability partners know what it is, since NR uses this name when sending reports.

Email addresses

One of the things you'll enter here is your email address, which will be the email used to activate your NR account. Note that when NR sends reports it sends them from the email address report@netresponsibility.com rather than your email address. In this part you will also enter the email addresses of those you wish to receive reports. These will normally be one or more accountability partners, but you may also want to enter your own email address as well, either to make sure everything is working okay or in case you want to get a copy of the reports. It may appear that you can only enter a limited amount of email addresses, but as you fill in the last visible field, an additional blank field will appear. This will continue until you've entered all the email addresses you need.

Tweaks

In this part, the following options can be set:

Blacklist categories

In this part, you can choose one or more blacklists that you want NR to use when creating your reports. Each of these blacklists is full of keywords. If any of the words are found in the websites you've visited, it will show up as a warning in the report.

Report parts

Here you can choose what parts you want included in your NR reports. You can also choose to include a more detailed attached report, which is strongly recommended. Following are the various report parts and related options, along with a brief description of each:

You may find it helpful for yourself and your accountability partners to have NR send reports using various combinations of the above options. This will give you a chance to see some sample reports and decide together what will work best for you.

Personal blacklist

Here you can enter keywords to make your personal blacklist. If you click on the blank field for this option, some basic instructions with some helpful links will show up on the right-hand side. If you already have a list you want to add, you can copy and paste it in the field. It will be split at every line break.

Personal whitelist

Here you can enter keywords to make your personal whitelist. If you click on the blank field for this option, some basic instructions with some helpful links will show up on the right-hand side. Note that only the hostname will be matched against the whitelist. If you already have a list you want to add, you can copy and paste it in the field. It will be split at every line break.

Configuration changes

If you want to make any changes to the configuration of NR, here are the steps to follow:

Once you have completed the above steps successfully, NR should now be running according to the new configuration options you chose. Also note that whoever normally receives your reports (i.e. your accountability partner) will also be notified when you change NR's configuration.