loggin out automatically

[trewornan]

Cameron Laird wrote:
> 
> 
> Say again what you want:  is it automatically to limit
> one particular user to a fixed session length?  Do you
> have a collection of users you want to limit?  Do you
> want to intervene before each action, or have them hap-
> pen automatically?  Are the users logging in through
> telnetd, sshd, ...?  Are they X consumers?  Precise 
> understanding might reveal that this is less convoluted
> than it currently appears.


I am responsible for maintaining a PC in a hotel which is available for 
use of guests, basically just e-mail and web browsing. We are currently 
using a program called "timewatcher" which allows me to provide "access 
codes" each code providing a particular period of access - 20, 30, 60 
min or whatever. Because we have had some security problems I was 
considering changing this computer to linux (probably red  hat 7.3) so I 
could secure the important parts of the system from the users.

Obviously some equivalent of the access software we are using would be 
required and my first thought was to apply a bit of Python by adding it 
to the 'rc' file for say 20 new users. It seemed to me if I could get 
Python to log a user out automatically then the rest could be cobbled 
together one way or another, without getting into anything too heavy?

I begin to suspect this might be beyond my capabilities.

M