Hi,

I am replacing my Windows Terminal server with Linux. I am going to have multiple users accessing the linux server probably using XWin.exe from their windows machines to use Linux. Everything is pritty much setup however, before I start letting users login I want some security. I need the ability to log off a remote user at anytime. Any Ideas?

Also any ideas on monitoring remote users would be useful but mainly I need to know how to force a user to log off from the root console.

I have searched around and found very little about commands for logging off remote users, but there must be a way.

Any help is welcome,
Thanx in advance.

PS in the meantime I'll keep searching and if I find anything I'll do my best to make sure you know about it

I don't think there is a specific command to log out users, but what always works is killing their login shell
Using the "w" command you can see who is logged in + their terminal (e.g. pts/1 if logged in over ssh)
Then use "ps", it has a switch to show all processes and the terminal they are running on (I forget, will have to look).
Matching these two gives you the processes and their numbers (PIDs) that are running at that terminal. Then shoot them into oblivion with "kill -9 <pid>"

Thanks for the input it was very useful

Hi,

I was also thought it might be useful to send the remote user a warning before logging them off, just a simple message so they can save their work.

Any thoughts?

Hi,
Try the "write" command: write <username>
Then you can type a message; when done press Ctrl-D and it should appear on the user's terminal.

To do this in one command (e.g. in a script) pipe the message to it:
write can also take the terminal to send to as argument -- check "man write" for the entiry list of possibilities.

regards,
nukkel

Hi,

Thanks for the suggestion but when I attempt to use the write command I get "write: you have write permission turned off." any idea how to turn it on. btw tried as root also.