Why idle users should be killed (was Re: Preventing Idle in telnet)

[Dan Bernstein]

To answer your question, pty 3.001 and its first patch are available via
anonymous ftp to stealth.acf.nyu.edu (128.122.128.22) or through mail to
me at brnstnd at nyu.edu. They've been waiting on the comp.sources.unix
queue for a while; ask Rich Salz, rsalz at uunet.uu.net, for details. I'm
always here to help with installation and applications. pty should work
without trouble on any BSD 4.2 or 4.3 variant---but not on POSIX-based
systems. (I'm working on a port.)

In article <1990Oct2.062510.3419 at ecn.purdue.edu> irick at ecn.purdue.edu (GarBear Irick) writes:
> Dan Bernstein writes:
> >pty. It slices! It dices! It autodisconnects! :-)
> Is there ANYONE else out there who is sick and tired of hearing people sing
> the praises of pty?

Well, not me, since I've been doing most of the singing. :-)

> It may be a durn fine piece of code, but I don't think
> ANYTHING deserves the hype that I have been seeing...  Maybe, SOMEDAY, when
> our machine *GETS* pty, I will see the light... :)  Please, let's suggest
> some solutions with EXISTING tools, just ONCE, ok, Dan?

It's not hype; I'm only describing working features of a program I've
written. If you want to get pty for your machine, send a polite note to
your sysadmin, or bring the code in and compile it yourself (though you
won't get most of the security features that way). And pty certainly
does exist.

Is it my fault that one program solves so many problems?

---Dan