NAME

gone —

a terminal locking utility with many improvements over lock

SYNOPSIS

gone [-bvpxl] [-y | -n] [-t timeout]

DESCRIPTION

gone is a utility that locks a terminal with a password chosen by the user. gone will prompt the user for a password, then print the gone banner, then drop into the gone shell. From this shell, only a restricted set of commands can be run. gone will also disallow messages by removing permissions on the parent tty. After the timeout period (10 minutes by default), gone will automatically log the user out.

If gone is installed setuid to root, then specifying the -p option will instruct gone to read the password from the system password file/database instead of prompting the user. Setuid'ing the program is done by setting the environmental variable with_setuid to ``yes'' then running configure.

Options:

-b: Supress printing the gone banner.
-v: Print the version number and exit.
-p: Read the password from the system password database (must be setuid root at install-time).
-x: Supress processing of extended shell commands (see the section on shell commands below).
-l: Prevent VTY switching if supported by the platform.
-y: By default gone turns messages off (see mesg(1) ). This option will turn messages on.
-n: Same as the -y option (deprecated).
-t timeout: Specify an optional timeout value in minutes. Default is 10 minutes. If set to 0, gone will lock the terminal indefinitely.

gone also accepts an optional string that is visible by using the w(1) command. Use this, and other users can see why you are gone.

SHELL COMMANDS

Commands for the gone shell (these commands can be abbreviated):

w: Invoke a UNIX w(1) command (extended command).
finger: Invoke a UNIX finger(1) command. When you type finger , you will be prompted for optional arguments (extended command).
whoami: Invoke a UNIX whoami(1) command (extended command).
help: Print the gone banner, and list of valid commands.
cls: Clear the screen and print the gone banner.
date: Invoke the UNIX date(1) command (extended command).
unlock: Unlock the terminal; prompts for unlock password.

FILES

/usr/local/bin/gone: Gone binary application

MINUTIAE

* gone will only run if the user is logged into a valid tty.
* Invoking a SIGINT, a SIGSTP, or a SIGQUIT will cause gone to print the time remaining before the user is logged out.

BUGS

No known bugs, but I welcome any bug reports or comments to <marcus@marcuscom.com>

AUTHOR

Joe Marcus Clarke <marcus@marcuscom.com>

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Dr. Burt "THE Doctor" Rosenberg, for motivating, for being a good friend, and for having a great jump shot.
Alexandra Loubeau, for using the damn thing.
Jason Glick for giving me the quota to do most of the initial work...and for Joe Satriani.
Craig Kolthoff for installing it on jaguar....finally; and for giving me a monster quota for FreeBSD.
Blake Winton <bwinton@iname.com>, for contributing the patch for indefinite terminal locking.