Remote Users

[Scott McDade]

I am trying to change the access level of a user however that user is currently logged on. I verify this by using the finger command. Is there a command that allows me to log that user off so that I can change access level?

[Joseph C. Denman · Accepted solution]

ps -ef | grep user

kill his shell

kill -9 PID

...jcd...

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Scott:

You can always kill the user (pun intended).

Seriously, I'd attempt to be gracefull. If the user is logged-in send him/her a message with 'write' (see 'man write' and use 'who' to get the terminal where he/she is logged on).

...JRF...

[Victor_5]

You can use

fuser -cu file
fuser -ku file

However, you'd better to make sure killing the process will not cause problem before you do so.

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Hi,

You can do a ps -u user -f to see his processes
and then kill them. You should first write/email/phone the user to get him to logoff. Bear in mind it is not safe to kill some processes and it is almost always a BAD IDEA to send a kill -9 to any process since no clean-up or exit handling of any sort is done.

Clay