How to unset TMOUT temporarily

[Jorge Fabregas]

Hello everyone,

I'm learning HP-UX and this is my first question on the forums :)

I always like to set the TMOUT variable in the .profile of the root user on all my servers. One thing I noticed in HP-UX is that I'm unable to unset the variable. On Linux, I have the variable in .bash_profile and whenever I know I'm going to be working for a while I do a "unset TMOUT" and I'm not kicked out for the time period specified in the variable.

On HP-UX, I have my TMOUT for 60 seconds. No matter if I do "unset TMOUT" ...I'll get the timeout msg at 60 seconds after login. It seems there's no way to turn off the timeout feature once you declare the variable. If I do "echo $TMOUT", after unsetting it, the variable is not there, so I'm unsetting it properly. Is there something I'm missing?

Thanks in advance,
Jorge

[Stanimir]

So after "login" you pass again through
.profile and may be you is setting this variable again.

[Robert-Jan Goossens]

Hi Jorge,

If you would to "unset" TMOUT you just have to export it again.

Regards,

Robert-Jan.

[James R. Ferguson · Accepted solution]

Hi Jorge:

# export TMOUT=0

...will set an infinite timeout.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Hai Nguyen_1]

Jorge,

# export TMOUT=

also sets an indefinite timeout.

Hai

[Jorge Fabregas]

Thanks everyone for taking the time to help me.

[Andrew Cowan]

Any root admin worth his salt will have set TMOUT as readonly (in /etc/PROFILE), in which case you can't change/unset it. However all you have to do is to enter "read" at the command line and hit enter, the shell will then sit there indefinately, or until you hit enter again.

[Pete Randall]

Andrew,

I'm unaware of the method used to set a variable read-only, could you shed some light on my ignorance, please?


Pete

[Sundar_7]

Hi Pete,

# typeset -r variable
# variable=somevalue
sh: variable: This variable is read only.
#

Thanks,

Sundar.