Idle time logout mechanism (daemon)

[Wombat]

> From: Barry Gold <lcc.barry at UCLA-LOCUS.ARPA>

> DON'T DO IT.  Try to educate your users to be more cooperative while you get
> more ports.  If necessary, increase the charge for connect time.

In our environment, these are not viable alternatives; we are adding ports,
and we have (in the past) increased the charge for connect time; neither
has discouraged port-sitting.  Therefore, we have such a daemon.
	
> If you put in a daemon to monitor idle time, you'll just encourage your
> users to write programs that make their terminals appear non-idle.

'Tis true.  However, most users will not be so clever--we hope.  In the
case of those that are, 'we will find them, and we will kill them'.(1)
	
> The solution to inadequate computing resources is to get more resources.
> If you can't afford more resources, charge enough for your computing
> that you CAN get more resources.

Perhaps.  Another solution is to make *intelligent* use of the resources
one has; in our case, since we are a university computing center, it is
clearly the preferred choice.

I don't like the idea of using such a daemon; however, after much debate
and discussion, we have concluded that it's the only way to solve our problem.
It may be fascist, but it works.

Rich Kulawiec
Purdue University Computing Center

(1) Saturday Night Live, 1984.