Secure Unix shell account with auto-logout TMOUT environment variable

$ TMOUT=10 ... after 10 seconds of inactivity ... $ timed out waiting for input: auto-logout

After setting the TMOUT variable to x seconds your shell will log out after x seconds of inactivity (Idle).

To have TMOUT environment variable set for all users or only for you, add to /etc/profile or ~/.profile or ~/.bash_profile the following line:

$ vim /etc/profile TMOUT=60 #or the number of seconds you want /etc/profile [+] -- INSERT --

Now press ESC and :x to save the file.

$ echo $TMOUT $ . /etc/profile $ echo $TMOUT 60

What I did was to add TMOUT=60 to /etc/profile. After saving the file, the variable TMOUT is not set, so my shell will not log out after 60 seconds of inactivity. In order to have this working I reloaded the settings in /etc/profile (by this command: . /etc/profile - notice the space between . and /etc/profile). Then I echoed again $TMOUT variable and there it was.

$ timed out waiting for input: auto-logout

I waited 60 seconds and my shell logged out because I was idle.

This was tested on FreeBSD, Red Hat running bash. I will soon test it on AIX 5.3 running bash and ksh. 

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