Idle Users

[Kenneth Brody]

Fairlight wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Jun 17, 2004 at 05:13:04PM -0400, Kenneth Brody, the prominent pundit,
> witicized:
> >
> > You're assuming that closing the window by clicking the "x" causes the
> > telnet session to be ended, and a SIGHUP to be sent.
> 
> If it doesn't, there's something wrong with either the emulator or the
> ssh/telnet/whatever daemon--or both.
> 
> More likely than not, the emulator would be closing without actually ending
> the session even semi-politely.  It's the equivalent of connection reset by
> peer, basically, and I've seen this happen on Solaris when my DSL desyncs
> during a storm.  It'll strand the session.  But any -proper- emulator
> should be politely ending the session according to the protocol if you
> close it by -any- means other than using the task manager to absolutely
> nuke it.  If it's not doing so, it's time to find a new emulator.
[...]

Well, I've seen cases where people claim they've been having problems
caused by people clicking "x" instead of exiting, and I have seen that
the telnet session is still alive.  (A "who" still shows it logged in,
and "ps" shows everything still running.)  Now, if these were actually
leftovers from "x"ing out, or caused by a connection reset instead, I
can't say.  But, I have seen it often enough that I find it hard to
believe that they're all connection resets.  (They always claim that
users are "x"ing out, not that they are mysteriously disconnected.
Now, back in dialup days, dropped connections were more prevalent.)

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| Kenneth J. Brody        | www.hvcomputer.com |                             |
| kenbrody at spamcop.net | www.fptech.com     | #include <std_disclaimer.h> |
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