IDLED(8)

NAME
idled - Idle terminal and multiple login monitor daemon.

SYNOPSIS
idled [-f config_file ]

DESCRIPTION

Idled wakes up at regular intervals and scans the system's utmp file to see which users are currently logged in, how long they have been idle, whether they are logged in more than once, etc. Idled then warns and logs out users based on a set of rules in its configuration file. Idled is usually started from /etc/rc.local on SunOS 4.x (and perhaps other BSD systems) or from a script something like S95idled in /etc/rc3.d on Solaris 2.3 (and perhaps other SVR4 systems).

Idled uses a configuration file, idled.cf, to find out how long a terminal must be unused to be considered “idle”, and which users, groups, terminals, or clusters of terminals are exempt from being logged out.

The path of the configuration file, which is compiled in, can be overriden by using the flag -f followed by the name of the configuration file to use (and path, if necessary).

Idled was written from a program called Untamo, which gets its name from the Finnish god of sleep and dreams.

FILES

/etc/idled.cf
    Configuration file which specifies how often idled is to wake up, and exemptions to rules, etc. There is no need to restart idled to change the configuration. If changes are made to this file, idled will re-read the configuration rules.

/var/log/idled.log
    Log of when idled is started, killed, who it logs off and why, and any errors it encounters.

AVAILABILITY

The newest version of idled is available via anonymous ftp to ftp.cs.hope.edu in /pub/idled

All comments and suggestions for idled would be greatly appreciated and should be sent to crider@cs.hope.edu

DIAGNOSTICS
Various “couldn't open ...” error messages. Since idled dissacociates itself from the invoking terminal, most of the errors get put in the log file.

SEE ALSO
idled.cf(5), utmp(5)

BUGS
If a user logs off and then on again fast enough and manages to get a different tty, he may be warned about a multiple login.

It will not warn the person on console about being logged off if that person is not in X-Windows, since things get really screwy then (due to some weirdness in the system blocking reading of the utmp file until a person hits <return> on the console's keyboard-- and that is one <return> for each utmp line!).

If idled is started considerably after a user's session limit is up, it will warn that it is waiting "warn" time before killing the session, but will actually only wait 10 seconds (which is adjustable via a line in chk_session() in idled.c). I left this because it would be somewhat messy to fix it, when it will probably not have much effect anyway.