How to Lock idle terminals automatically -- plz help

[Maaz]

is it possible that if a user left his/her terminal idle for 10 minutes, then his/her terminal will automatically lock via vlock or any other utility ?

for security reasons I want to implement the policy that if a terminal is idle from 10 min, it will be locked, automatically(implicitly).

In SCO Open Server 5, the way to acheive the above mentioned task is(from memories)

#vi /etc/default/idleout
IDLETIME=n # where n is any number in minutes.

Any1 any Help

Regards,
Maaz

[Kusum Garge_1]

Hi,

Adding TMOUT= and EXPORT TMOUT in /etc/profile should work.

Garge

[Steven E. Protter]

TMOUT variable will achieve lock on most terminal sessions at the prompt. If any application, even top is running it will not time out the session.

This is in general handled in the application. Our databases will time out sessions and dump the user to a prompt after the 30 minute idle time requirement is met.

SEP

[Heiner E. Lennackers]

What kind of terminals you are talking about? Text based terminals oder X-Terminals?

If it's about X-terminals you should take a look at the problem 'xautolock'. It will monitor the input and will start the specified lock program if needed.

btw.: TMOUT in a bourne compatible shell (sh, ksh, bash etc) will not lock the terminal, it will logoff the user.

[Maaz]

hello

thanks dear Kusum Garge, SEP and Heiner E. Lennackers.

kusum Garge but i dont want that user will be log off after a certain amount of idle time, as exporting TMOUT do. what I want is that if a user will leave its terminal idle for a certain amount of time, then his/her terminal will be aoutomatically LOCKED. (vlock installed at all systems)

Yes SEP as u mentioned that "If any application, even top is running it will not time out the session. ", and this is a prblm. i.e. exporting TMOUT is not that smart solution.

Heiner E. Lennackers, Majorly, I m talking about Text-based Terminal (bash), but I also want to LOCK idle x-terminals(GUI) also. I'll check 'xautolock' and will let u(...and the forum) know abt .

Any how, many thanks kusum Garge, SEP, and Heiner E. Lennackers.