source: trunk/athena/bin/session/session_gate.1 @ 12350

.\"     $Id: session_gate.1,v 1.5 1999-01-22 23:15:27 ghudson Exp $
.\"
.TH SESSION_GATE 1 "30 November 1990"
.ds ]W MIT Project Athena
.SH NAME
session_gate, end_session \- control lifetime of a session

.SH SYNOPSIS
.nf
session_gate [-logout]
end_session [ -force | -f ]
.fi
.SH DESCRIPTION

\fISession_gate\fR is a process that waits for a user's session to
end, and then optionally executes their logout script.  Normally,
\fIsession_gate\fR appears at or near the end of a session file used
by \fIxlogin\fR(1).  When used in this fashion, \fIsession_gate\fR
should not be run in the background.  If \fIsession_gate\fR is invoked
with the \fI-logout\fR option, and there is a file \fI\&.logout\fR in
the directory it was started in, it will execute that file before
exiting. (For historical reasons, \fI/bin/athena/tcsh\fR will be used
to interpret the file if it does not begin with a #! string.)

\fIEnd_session\fR is a command that attempts to send a hangup signal to
each \fIsession_gate\fR process that is running.  Normally, the user
invokes \fIend_session\fR to indicate that the current session is to be
terminated.  The \fIlogout\fR can be aliased (in the shell) to invoke
\fIend_session\fR, for example.

\fIEnd_session\fR determines the process id of each \fIsession_gate\fR
process by reading the file /tmp/session_gate_pid.\fIuid\fR, where
\fIuid\fR is the user's uid number.  If the \fI-force\fR or \fI-f\fR option
is specified, then a combination of \fIps\fR(1) and \fIawk\fR(1) is used
for determining the process id's.

Note that at Athena, the environment variable \fBXSESSION\fR is
usually set to the process ID of the \fIsession_gate\fR so that logout
is just aliased to 'kill -HUP $XSESSION' and \fIend_session\fR is now
obsolete.

.SH DIAGNOSTICS

\fISession_gate\fR exits with status 0, or the status of the
\fI\&.logout\fR script.

\fIEnd_session\fR will exit with one of the following status values:
.TP 5
0
No error encountered.
.TP 5
1
Bad arguments.
.TP 5
2
No \fIsession_gate\fR processes found (\fI-force\fR or \fI-f\fR option).
.TP 5
3
The file /tmp/session_gate_pid.\fIuid\fR does not exist or is not readable.
.TP 5
4
The file /tmp/session_gate_pid.\fIuid\fR has been modified.
.PP

.SH FILES
/tmp/session_gate_pid.\fIuid\fR

.SH "SEE ALSO"
\fIxlogin\fR(1)

.SH AUTHOR
.nf
David J Flanagan, John E Elsbree
MIT Project Athena
Copyright 1989, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
.fi

.SH BUGS
The \fI-force\fR (\fI-f\fR) option is, admittedly, a kludge.  It is very
dependent on the format of the output produced by \fIps\fR(1).