auto_logout

Package to automatically hard-logout users in OS X computer labs.

Computers can be set using the builtin tools to automatically logout users after a predetermined amount of time. However, it will wait, and ultimately fail, if a user has unsaved changes in an Office document, running processes in a terminal session, etc.

I tried numerous ways of doing this--the first idea was to killall -9 loginwindow, but, that frequently left users with a glitched out loginwindow (Go figure...)

So I eventually decided to just reboot the computer. Of course, this requires a change to the sudoers file, which is why there is a postinstall script. Please take note! As configured, this will allow any user to reboot or shutdown the computer using the commandline reboot and shutdown commands.

If the computer has a power schedule, and the machine is past the scheduled shutdown time, it will just shut down instead of reboot.

If the boot drive is FileVaulted, auto_logout will restart using fdesetup authrestart instead of a regular reboot. This bypasses the FileVault unlock screen.

Installation

Grab the latest package from the releases section and install on clients to use the default timing and icon.

If you would like to build yourself to incorporate custom settings, a Makefile is provided for use with the Luggage. Of course, feel free to use your choice of package building software.

Customization

There are a few variables that you can adjust to suit your environment.

In /usr/local/bin/auto_logout.py:

• MAXIDLE: The number of seconds after which a system is considered to be idle. (Default is 1800 seconds, i.e. 30 minutes).
• LO_TIMEOUT: The number of seconds a user has to cancel the auto logout after the alert runs. (Configured for 120 seconds).
• ICON_PATH: A valid path to an icon file (a .png) to use in the alert window. (Defaults to a nasty dark cloud icon).
• ALERT_SOUND: Name of a sound to play when firing alert. See Sounds section. (Defaults to "Submarine").

In /Library/LaunchAgents/org.da.autoLogout.plist

• StartInterval The interval, in seconds, after which the LaunchAgent runs. (Defaults to run every 5 minutes).

Sounds

If you want to use a different sound, you must provide the name of the sound, not the filename, and not the path. I.e "Sosumi", not "Sosumi.aiff" or "/System/Library/Sosumi.aiff".

If you don't want a sound, set ALERT_SOUND to "" or None.

The search path is:

• ~/Library/Sounds
• /Library/Sounds
• /Network/Library/Sounds
• /System/Library/Sounds (This is where all of the builtin sounds live)

If you want to include a custom sound, it needs to be available in one of those paths. So for example, if you wanted to use the sound file "TotalEclipseOfTheHeart.aiff", copy it to /Library/Sounds (which may not exist by default), and set the ALERT_SOUND option like this: ALERT_SOUND = "TotalEclipseOfTheHeart"

Sounds must be a aiff; extension .aif is not valid.