Autologout of unused terminals

[Ed Horch]

In article <1874 at loral.UUCP> jlh at loral.UUCP (Physically Pffft) writes:
>In article <3603 at jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> lwall at jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall) writes:
>>Not only that, but idle-killers are so easy to spoof, unless you disable
>>people from executing utime() or ioctl().
>
>Hmmm, mine just sleeps X minutes, then asks the terminal what type it is.
>Go back to sleep, ad nauseum.  Has the advantage that the responce comes
>from the terminal itself, then through the data lines, muxes, data switches,
>and god knows what else,

This is a good idea, since some autologout mechanisms reside in the
data switch rather than the host.  X minutes of no traffic and the
fascist switch drops the data call.

My solution to this would be to fire up a program that prompts for a
password, and doesn't exit until the user's password is correctly
typed, or the call is dropped.  Every X/2 minutes, invisibly repaint
the Password: prompt to keep the autologout fascists happy.  That way,
nobody can walk up to a terminal and wreak havoc in somebody else's
shell, but the call can be dropped by dropping the line.

-Ed