Help with disconnecting idle telnet users

[Bruce Eley]

Hi,
My company uses the Tru64 5.1b OS. Our user connect to a program called WMS via a telnet connection. We are in need of being able to have the system disconnect idle user connections that have been idle for approx. 15 minutes. I have tried the TMOUT in /etc/profile but it does not seem to work. Not sure if a change in that file requires a system reboot or not. Any help is greatly appreciated!

[Steven Schweda]

> Our user connect to a program called WMS
> via a telnet connection.

You mean they connect to the Tru64 system
using Telnet, log in, and run a program
called WMS? (Or do they Telnet to some
oddball port where WMS is listening?)

> I have tried the TMOUT in /etc/profile but
> it does not seem to work.

Tried how? /etc/profile is a shell start-up
file, so it's read when a login shell is
started. Changing it has no effect on a
_running_ shell.

> Not sure if a change in that file requires
> a system reboot or not.

Only a shell restart. (Loging in again would
be an easy way to start a fresh shell.)

Of course, whether your shell reads
/etc/profile or cares about TMOUT rather
depends on your shell. A C shell ignores
/etc/profile. The classic Bourne shell may
not care about TMOUT.

man sh

man 1b sh | grep 'T.*M.*O.*U.*T'

man 1p sh | grep 'T.*M.*O.*U.*T'

Setting both TMOUT and TIMEOUT might be
useful.

[Bruce Eley]

When the users log in it is using a telnet session on the Tru64 server. At the login the WMS program then runs. This program also resides on the Tru64 server. I did edit the /etc/profile and logged out and back in but it still did not disconnect me during the test. Is the TIMEOUT the same a TMOUT?

[Steven Schweda]

> Is the TIMEOUT the same a TMOUT?

Why trust _me_?

> man sh
> man 1b sh | grep 'T.*M.*O.*U.*T'
> man 1p sh | grep 'T.*M.*O.*U.*T'

Or for more casual exploration:

man 1b sh
man 1p sh

So, which shell(s) are you using?

For testing, you should be able to set the
appropriate variable interactively -- no need
to restart the shell that way.

[Kapil Jha]

You said at login this program run.SO startup script/command for this program for this user must be somewhere in ~user/.profile files.
Can you try puttin TMOUT in .profile file.

Which shell u r using???
How this WMS is starting for user??

BR,
Kapil

[Bruce Eley]

This is what the profile folder in the /usr/dcs forlder has....this where the WMS program has all of its information...does this help any?

[Rob Leadbeater]

Hi Bruce,

You'll be able to find out what shell your users are using by looking at the last field of each line in /etc/passwd

Once you've determined that, it should be feasible to work out which timeout parameter to set...

Cheers,

Rob

[Bruce Eley]

It says /usr/users/dcs:/bin/sh

[Rob Leadbeater]

So you're using the Bourne shell.

As Steven pointed out, you need to be using the TIMEOUT paramter, as shown in the man page for sh.

# man 1b sh

Cheers,

Rob

[Bruce Eley]

Problem fixe...thanks for all the information!