[BBLISA] screen locking - pam and xscreensaver

Scott Ehrlich scott at MIT.EDU
Wed Jan 16 15:33:30 EST 2008


For an out-of-box Centos install that utilizes PAM for xscreensaver within both 
gnome and kde, what factors would lead to xscreensaver not being able to 
properly unlock the user?   I reviewed the logs and nothing helped.

I performed ldd on xscreensaver and an ls -l on each dependency proved they 
were all there.

The system uses local /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow files for authentication - no 
NIS or LDAP or Kerberos.

If Xwindows was to be disabled, and only tty was used, what would be the best 
option for ensuring the logged-in session was locked after a determined amount 
of inactivity>

Also, if the user stepped away from the system and wanted to manually lock it, 
what is the best tty screen-locking utility? I reviewed vlock, but after 
prompting me for my password, it then prompted for root's.  That was less than 
helpful.

Thanks.

Scott




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