Multiple Idle Users

Boss Hoss · 02-19-2006, 12:27 AM

When I do a TOP command I see 5 users. So I do the following to see WHO they are.

Code:

susebox:/etc # w
 01:25:34 up 3 days, 14:27,  5 users,  load average: 0.03, 0.08, 0.11
USER     TTY        LOGIN@   IDLE   JCPU   PCPU WHAT
msusol   :0        Wed10   ?xdm?   1:37m  0.01s -:0              
msusol   pts/0     Wed10    3days  0.00s  1.13s kdeinit: kded            
root     :2/suseb  Sat01   ?xdm?   1:37m  0.00s -susebox.ultimate
root     pts/3     00:33    0.00s  0.06s  0.00s w
root     pts/2     21:28    1:34m  0.08s  0.08s -bash

Now I know I only have one ssh session open under root, so these other 4 are probably from using VNC and then having my connection broken.

So how can I terminate these idle user sessions?

RobertP · 02-19-2006, 05:06 PM

I use a terminal server in my computer lab so I see such things often.

#pkill -u musol will get rid of musol's processes.

My favourite is, if you want to kill all ordinary users with directories in /home,

#cd /home
#for f in *;do pkill -u$f;done

It is really neat to see all the screens blank all over the room

A related command is pgrep for finding a user's processes.
pgrep naughty
will find every process called naughty.
pgrep firefox will find all instances of firefox, etc.

Good fun!