Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!aplcen!haven!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Preventing Idle in telnet
Message-ID: <13970@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 30 Sep 90 02:16:12 GMT
References: <24593@adm.BRL.MIL>
Organization: U.S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratory, APG, MD.
Lines: 15

In article <24593@adm.BRL.MIL> aeba-im-o-e2@berlin-emh1.army.mil ( Kendrick Gibson) writes:
>Should an idle keyboard be reason to automatically log a user out?

Definitely not!  Just because a person is not interacting at the moment
does NOT mean that he does not need the connection maintained.  There
are dozens of possible scenarios; I'll leave them as an exercise.

>Is there a better way for the Sys Ad to determine whether a user
>is really idle?  

Yes -- go take a look at the user, and if he has stopped breathing,
you may safely assume he's idle.

Seriously, you seem to imply that there is some sort of "problem"
that needs to be solved.  Just what IS the problem?