Idle time logout mechanism (daemon)

[Sam Kimery]

> 
> 
> The talk of daemons makes me worry - on our system you cannot tell from the
> modify time of the terminal whether a line is idle or not.  While people
> are sitting in our favourite screen editor, they show up as idle to `w' and
> such how ever busily they are typing - one of those daemons are our machine
> would embarrass a lot of people!  Does no one else have this feature ?  I
> believe it is a feature of `cbreak', although I have not spent the time
> rummaging through the teletype driver to investigate.
> 
> (We're running 4.2bsd on a VAX780)
> 
It is fairly simple to make the mods to both csh and sh to include and
optional autologout feature (That could be installed as new accounts are
added and owned by root to make it harder to remove.)  The length of time
can be set externally.  This involves about 5 - 10 lines of code, and
is much cleaner than a daemon.  (but is contrary to the normal Un*x 
philosophy)  This will also NOT log you out if you are not in the parent
shell.  (Of course this relies on how you program it).  This means that
you won't be knocked out of an editor, etc.)  The way we are running
we use the variable ILOG, set in the .cshrc files.  (IE setenv ILOG 30,
gives 30 minutes of idle time before autologout)

			Sam Kimery
			kimery at FORD-WDL1