11-18-2011, 02:00 AM

I'm looking for a way to log out a background user who forgot to log out - from the terminal.

I know this is trivial in the *nix world, just killing a process probably; I just can't find the command to do it in Mac's flavor (I'm a casual *nix shell user)

BTW, I don't want the Prefs->Security->General "logout after inactivity" setting.... that logs out everybody (including me) and I can't have my account logged out (due to running processes).

this is the closest I have gotten so far: but this will obviously log me out.
osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to log out'

Thank you,
Jason

11-18-2011, 10:25 AM

I'm having a tough time finding a way to do this with Terminal. A couple tricks I read of and tried that involved killing the "loginwindow" process for another user didn't work as expected. At the moment, here's the best solution I can find but involves a 3rd party utility:
How to log out a fast switched user

11-21-2011, 09:07 PM

Excellent tip. This looks like it's going to work fine. I'm testing right now....


Thanks!

11-21-2011, 09:38 PM

Remember, OS X is Unix so if there's some technique that you know of in Unix, it may work here. Now, the variants of Unix are all quite different so I can't guarantee this is the case here. What do you do on a *nix box to accomplish this?

11-21-2011, 09:43 PM

Originally Posted by vansmith

Remember, OS X is Unix so if there's some technique that you know of in Unix, it may work here. Now, the variants of Unix are all quite different so I can't guarantee this is the case here. What do you do on a *nix box to accomplish this?

well, something like...


kill -9 `ps -u <username> | grep -v PID | awk '{ printf ("%s ", $1); }'`


would accomplish this it's ummm well, kinda forceful though

11-21-2011, 10:14 PM

echo "ARE YOU SURE!?!?!? PRESS ENTER IF YOU'RE SURE!" ; read
kill -9 `ps -u <username> | grep -v PID | awk '{ printf ("%s ", $1); }'`

Does that help to soften it up?

11-21-2011, 10:15 PM

well, getting rid of the -9 might be friendlier

11-21-2011, 10:18 PM

You mean the yelling to ensure the confidence of the user wasn't enough?

11-21-2011, 11:03 PM

Oh I'm ALWAYS sure of my commands when I issue them

11-23-2011, 08:18 PM

Originally Posted by Dysfunction

well, something like...


kill -9 `ps -u <username> | grep -v PID | awk '{ printf ("%s ", $1); }'`


would accomplish this it's ummm well, kinda forceful though

This is what I'm looking for - more-so than the 3rd party program.

However, when I try this, the <username> is an invalid argument of "ps". Should this be user ID?

When I do $ps -u, I only see my username.
$ps -A lists a lot of processes, but I don't see any from the other users in the background....

Can you help correct this?

11-27-2011, 10:34 PM

Hi Dysfunction: can you help me correct the argument <username> problem?
Thanks

11-27-2011, 10:57 PM

Umm yea, it should be a valid username, without the <>'s

Oh and you'd need to issue that with either root or superuser authority.

11-28-2011, 01:24 AM

Originally Posted by Dysfunction

Umm yea, it should be a valid username, without the <>'s

Oh and you'd need to issue that with either root or superuser authority.

oops, I see how my comment would be misinterpreted... I meant that when I use a valid username - it gives errors. I changed lower case 'u' (userID) to upper case 'U' (username) and that seems to kill everything for that user.

The user still shows up in the FSU list however, and switching to that user hangs the GUI/console - so it's definitely not clean! But it is an option, and I thank you!

Thanks greatly!

11-28-2011, 09:28 AM

Ohhh ok, gotcha. But I think it's the opposite, that username is lowercase and UID is upper.

Yea, it's not the cleanest method in the world. It's a bit like hitting a nail with a sledgehammer