Logging out idle users after a certain timeframe Post: 302426406

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Operating Systems Solaris Logging out idle users after a certain timeframe Post 302426406 by curleb on Tuesday 1st of June 2010 10:09:50 PM

06-01-2010

Registered User

Well, the nuclear option that you're suggesting for yourself would be for a root or superuser to kill any jobs associated with non-Admin and higher GIDs...every 3 hours. For this to work, you'd need to identify the PIDs associated with these GIDs and work backwards from there. Gritty...and dangerous.

For example, what if little Cindy Lou Who signs on and is working on a time-critical item...only to be killed based on your cron job? The loss in her time alone might be sufficient to raise alarms, if it doesn't corrupt data as a result as well. Tack on the likelihood that it happens after-hours, after she's just signed in at 1135pm, on New Year's Eve while she's been ordered to do so from the corner office...and it spirals from there.

TMOUT, on the other hand, will serve to neutralize lingering sessions where the User has been idle (ie, not actually working) for a specified amount of time. Their own passivity serves the purpose to allow the system to sign them off; sort of like banking websites. It's a rolling window that resets according to their login time and their activity. Imagine if banks took the aggressive approach and nixed your session while you were still setting up a transfer to your offshore account? (All those fractions of cents add up, you know...)

I'd strongly suggest that you at least apply the TMOUT option first and see if would suit the audit requirement. Something that works, as opposed to a whiz-bang script written from the ground up, might just suit the requirement perfectly...with zero effort.

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LEARN ABOUT OPENDARWIN

who

WHO(1)							    BSD General Commands Manual 						    WHO(1)

NAME

     who -- display who is on the system

SYNOPSIS

     who [-HmqsTu] [am I] [file]

DESCRIPTION

     The who utility displays information about currently logged in users.  By default, this includes the login name, tty name, date and time of
     login and remote hostname if not local.

     The options are as follows:

     -H      Write column headings above the output.

     -m      Show information about the terminal attached to standard input only.

     -q      ``Quick mode'': List the names and number of logged in users in columns.  All other command line options are ignored.

     -s      Show the name, line and time fields only.	This is the default.

     -T      Indicate whether each user is accepting messages.	One of the following characters is written:

	     +	User is accepting messages.
	     -	User is not accepting messages.
	     ?	An error occurred.

     -u      Show idle time for each user in hours and minutes as hh:mm, '.' if the user has been idle less that a minute, and ``old'' if the user
	     has been idle more than 24 hours.

     am I    Equivalent to -m.

     By default, who gathers information from the file /var/run/utmp.  An alternate file may be specified which is usually /var/log/wtmp (or
     /var/log/wtmp.[0-6] depending on site policy as wtmp can grow quite large and daily versions may or may not be kept around after compression
     by ac(8)).  The wtmp file contains a record of every login, logout, crash, shutdown and date change since wtmp was last truncated or created.

     If /var/log/wtmp is being used as the file, the user name may be empty or one of the special characters '|', '}' and '~'.	Logouts produce an
     output line without any user name.  For more information on the special characters, see utmp(5).

ENVIRONMENT

     The COLUMNS, LANG, LC_ALL and LC_TIME environment variables affect the execution of who as described in environ(7).

FILES

     /var/run/utmp
     /var/log/wtmp
     /var/log/wtmp.[0-6]

DIAGNOSTICS

     The who utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

SEE ALSO

     last(1), users(1), w(1), utmp(5)

STANDARDS

     The who utility conforms to IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 (``POSIX.1'').

HISTORY

     A who command appeared in Version 1 AT&T UNIX.

BSD
								    May 8, 2002 							       BSD