<div dir="ltr"><div><div><div>Teach people how to use screen/tmux for their long running console jobs. Teach them nohup for when they get autologged out (see below)<br></div><div><br></div>+1 disable user name display as mentioned earlier<br></div>+1 disable non-root power control as earlier<br><br><pre class=""><span style="color:rgb(128,128,128);font-style:italic"># <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-weight:bold">set</span> a <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0)">5</span> min timeout policy <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-weight:bold">for</span> bash shell</span>
<span style="color:rgb(0,120,0)">TMOUT=</span><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0)">300</span>
<span style="color:rgb(122,8,116);font-weight:bold">readonly</span> TMOUT
<span style="color:rgb(122,8,116);font-weight:bold">export</span> TMOUT
<br></pre>set up the above in /etc/profile and users can't change it locally.<br></div><div><br></div>Setup a cluster aware job control process like gridengine and kill off local console access for all but one head node.<br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Nov 11, 2014 at 1:54 PM, Boris Borisov <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:bugyatl@gmail.com" target="_blank">bugyatl@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">Disable shutdown-reboot for non root users maybe !<div class="HOEnZb"><div class="h5"><br><br>On Tuesday, November 11, 2014, Todor Fassl <<a href="mailto:fassl.tod@gmail.com" target="_blank">fassl.tod@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">The biggest problem is that the login screen gets crowded with the names of other users who have logged in recently. Students don't see the box to enter a different user ID so they reboot the machine which kills off any matlab or sage jobs somebody else might have started. After a reboot, the login screen has maybe one or two names on it. There must be some fairly complex algorithm for determining who gets on that list because I cannot see a pattern.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
On 11/11/2014 12:15 PM, Ed Cashin wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
I was reading kind of fast, but I'm not sure you pointed out any<br>
specific ill effects. I'd expect the kernel to page to disk the pages<br>
in RAM associated with the unused sessions. So once all the matlab<br>
state (etc.) is on the swap partition, there'd be little cost associated<br>
with a stale login as long as you have plenty of swap space. Maybe<br>
everything is already fine now?<br>
<br>
On Tue, Nov 11, 2014 at 11:55 AM, Todor Fassl <<a>fassl.tod@gmail.com</a><br>
<mailto:<a>fassl.tod@gmail.com</a>>> wrote:<br>
<br>
Suggestions?<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
On 11/11/2014 10:47 AM, JD wrote:<br>
<br>
Is there a question?<br>
<br>
On 11/11/2014 11:32 AM, Todor Fassl wrote:<br>
<br>
I have a problem in a lab I am responsible for. The lab has<br>
7 debian stable<br>
machines. Students log in to check mail, browse the web,<br>
etc. But they<br>
frequently walk away without logging out. Soon enough, the<br>
screen saver comes on<br>
and the next person sits down and logs in as another user.<br>
Often, the first<br>
person comes back hours late or the next day and logs in a<br>
second time. Some of<br>
these machines have the same user logged in 5 or 6 times.<br>
<br>
The problem is that some of these students start matlab,<br>
sage, or magma jobs<br>
before they walk away from the workstation. Those are<br>
legitimate jobs and should<br>
not be killed. In fact, sometimes students ssh to these<br>
machines and run<br>
computations. It's kind of a bad idea but I'd rather not<br>
tell them not to do<br>
that. Otherwise, I'd just have the machines reboot<br>
themselves every night.<br>
<br>
We used to use a tool called timeoutd but it seems to have<br>
been removed from the<br>
debian stable and ubuntu archives. I was never able to get<br>
it to work right<br>
anyway. Students would complain that their jobs had been<br>
killed or that they<br>
were logged out while they were typing away. At the same<br>
time, I could see that<br>
other users were still logged in after days/weeks of<br>
inactivity. I am not sure<br>
the problem really was with timeoutd because finger often<br>
gave me weird<br>
results.I'm not sure linux was giving timeoutd correct data<br>
to work with.<br>
<br>
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--<br>
Ed Cashin <<a>ecashin@noserose.net</a> <mailto:<a>ecashin@noserose.net</a>>><br>
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<br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div dir="ltr">-- <br>James P. Kinney III<br><i><i><i><i><br></i></i></i></i>Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you
gain at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his
own tail. It won't fatten the dog.<br>
- Speech 11/23/1900 Mark Twain<br><i><i><i><i><br><a href="http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/</a><br></i></i></i></i></div>
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