Saturday, August 20, 2011

How to Logout Linux users automatically.


How do I auto Logout my shell user in Linux after certain minutes of inactivity?
Linux bash shell allows you to define the TMOUT environment variable. Set TMOUT to automatically log users out after a period of inactivity. The value is defined in seconds. For example,

 export TMOUT=120 


The above command will implement a 2 minute idle time-out for the default  /bin/bash shell. You can edit your ~/.bash profile or /etc/profile file as follows to define a 5 minute idle time out: 


 # set a 5 min timeout policy for bash shell

TMOUT=300

readonly TMOUT

export TMOUT

Save and close the file. The readonly command is used to make variables and functions readonly i.e. you user cannot change the value of variable called TMOUT.

How Do I Disable TMOUT?

To disable auto-logout, just set the TMOUT to zero or unset it as follows: 

$ export TMOUT=0  or
$ unset TMOUT

Please note that readonly variable can only be disabled by root in /etc/profile or ~/.bash_profile.

 

 

No comments:

Post a Comment