Close another user's session

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301394

says:

"In Mac OS X 10.3 and later and Mac OS X Server 10.3 and later, you can have your computer automatically log out of your account if you've been inactive for a set amount of time. In the client version of Mac OS X 10.3 and later, you can turn on this feature in the Security pane in System Preferences. In Mac OS X Server 10.3 and later, you can set this option in Login Preferences (click the Auto Log-Out tab).

However, if you have a document open with unsaved changes, the application will cancel the logout process. This is expected behavior. Mac OS X 10.3 and 10.4 do this to prevent you from losing your unsaved data. "

given that, you'd also have to know how to use the kill command to stop another users process, which can be done through Activity Monitor.

The option referenced will set logout delay for all accounts on the computer.

Alternately, if you have fast user switching, you can just leave them logged in and switch to a different user.

I'm kinda unclear about the original question: if you have physical access to the computer and someone is logged in, you can just log that person out without needing any special privs. So we must be talking about some kind of remote or multiuser situation?

Impress upon them that if they continue to forget to logout, they will no longer be able to use to the machine

and

Since you are admin, change their PWs to blank, then make them limited users (so they can re-password their accounts), then FUS and log them out.

sudo killall -u user loginwindow

Where user is the username of the account you want to kill.

Note that this is fairly unclean and won't give apps a chance to clean up after themselves, but it should work.

Hello!

I downloaded software called HyperResearch 2.6 for OX 10.4,
but when I create a non admin account - ie - managed student account,
this software says, "You do not have permission to open the application".
I allowed the student account to run this software but it still does not
open. Noticed on the allowed software list, it un-ticks itself.

I suspect this software is not multi-user aware.
What string or code does the company have to put in for it to work?

This is the software,

http://www.researchware.com/hr/downloads.html

Any thanks if anyone can help!

Sidney
University of NSW
Faculty of Arts
Australia

Welcome to Apple's Discussion Forum system sidney!

If you post a reply to a message in an existing topic, everyone assumes it relates to the subject of the existing topic. That means people who might know about your issue but not the one that started the topic to which you posted won't bother reading your message:( If you want to discuss something new, please always start a new topic.

You can fast user switch from the command line using this shell script:

#!/bin/zsh -f
if [[ $OSTYPE[7] -lt 7 ]];then
print "Fast User Switching is not available in OSX version $os_version"
return 1
fi
if [[ -z $1 ]]; then
/System/Library/CoreServices/Menu\ Extras/User.menu/Contents/Resources/CGSession -suspend
else
USERID=`id -u $1`;
if [[ -z $USERID ]]; then
return -1;
fi
/System/Library/CoreServices/Menu\ Extras/User.menu/Contents/Resources/CGSession -switchToUserID $USERID
fi

hello,

instead of closing a session, i'd like to log someone in through the terminal (from a remote machine)

i hope you can help me out of this 🙂

thx,

julien

sudo killall -u user
loginwindow

Where user is the username of the account you want to
kill.

Note that this is fairly unclean and won't give apps
a chance to clean up after themselves, but it should
work.

Hi Bill,
That's really cool! What I think would be almost as cool is to know how in the world you found out that CGSession accepts those command line options, or any command line option for that matter! I'd be tempted to write a command that finds every executable and tries to invoke it with a --help option. However, CGSession doesn't seem to have help text.
--
Gary
~~~~
I'm not tense, just terribly, terribly alert!

Killing the windowserver process might do it.

Do their accounts have passwords?

If not, then use fast user switching and log them out normally.

That's awesome Bill!

It's part of the zsh-templates fink package, too.