Power Management and Encryption

Daniel Feenberg feenberg-fCu/yNAGv6M at public.gmane.org
Tue May 18 14:52:03 EDT 2010



On Tue, 18 May 2010, Bill Bogstad wrote:

> On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 12:18 PM, Daniel Feenberg <feenberg-fCu/yNAGv6M at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>
>>
>> Further search on google suggests the only way to accomplish this is to
>> write a cron job that periodically consults the "w" command for idle times.
>> Apparently the powers that be think that an unexpected shutdown might cause
>> violence to a running process, and have elected not to make it readily
>> available.
>
> "w" only reports on applications that use a terminal or pty.   GUI
> programs aren't considered.  According to "w",
> my system has been idle for 2:15 seconds while I was writing this response. :-)

OK, I will give up on this one. This wasn't on the agency list of 
mandatory requirements for us but I do worry a little bit that the 
inspector might drop by unanounced and find the unattended computer left 
turned on - which would be a problem for us.

>
> Bill Bogstad
>





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