brnstnd@stealth.acf.nyu.edu (05/25/90)
In article <265A888F.28EE@marob.masa.com> daveh@marob.masa.com (Dave Hammond) writes: > I am trying to implement an idle terminal logout mechanism for users who > login to publically accessable terminals and leave an open shell prompt > for hours at a time. [ untamo logs users out whether they're at the shell or at an editor ] What's the difference? The point of an idle daemon is to keep users from leaving terminals unattended for too long. Why should it matter whether a tty is unattended in a shell or in an editor? There is an excellent solution to all these problems: namely, to provide a detach-attach mechanism (through, e.g., ptys), and to simply detach users after too much idle time. This has the advantage that the user can reconnect later, whether he was at a shell prompt or inside a program, wihtout any hassle. Naturally, it obsoletes idle daemons that do a ``lock'' on the terminal, since to reattach the user has to log in somewhere else anyway; and the user isn't stuck if he can't get back to the original terminal. > I am also aware that ksh has the TMOUT variable, but we have only the > stock sh and csh shells here, and management is not interested in > purchasing ksh for all involved systems. See if autologout in csh will help. ---Dan