LOGMON Details and Pricing

The first section below is a technical overview of how Logmon works. It may answer questions that you have about the workings of Logmon. The second section is a less technical summary of why Logmon is handy...Please review both documents...

How Does Logmon Work?

Logmon runs as a background daemon, and once a minute it wakes up and checks the cpu utilization of all users on the system. We actually want to look at terminal processes (not other system processes), so we use the data in /etc/utmp (the same information that the who command displays). For each user listed in "who", we look up their process id, and then trace the child processes being run by that parent. Now, if we see no cpu activity on any of these processes, the user is considered idle. (The actual trace of the process id's looks for users in the same process group as the parent process.)

You can tune it also, so that a user running a process that always takes "a little" bit of cpu is still considered idle. This is handy for programs that update a clock on the screen, for example. Within Logmon, there is a menu called "rules". Within the rules menu, you specify the name of a program, and a relative cpu usage level. If the cpu usage remains below this level, then the user of this named program is considered idle.

Once you are idle the specified time period, a warning message can be sent and if you remain inactive you will be logged off. Note that you can tune the inactivity time by user id, time of day, port in use, etc. It is also possible to combine these attributes and to further fine tune the operation of Logmon by customizing a "code_script", if this is desired.

By default, a user is killed by running a script that does a kill with a -1 signal (SIGHUP). We will first execute the kill -1 for each child process that you have started. Then, if these processes remain, we will execute a kill -9 (SIGKILL) for the child processes. Finally, we will kill the main process, the one that is attached to the terminal/PC, using a kill -1 signal (again, the same hang-up signal as if you just turned your terminal or PC off).

This is only the default and is changeable by modifying the script. A second script is provided that only executes the kill on the main process; this can be used if you do not wish to kill each child process individually. You can even have different scripts and different actions based on the program that is being run. This script can use other kill signals or it can run a program that some databases provide to gracefully terminate a user's access to the database. This is handy when used with programs like Vmark's Universe, using the "master.off" command.

One last note: because we monitor cpu time and not keyboard activity, you will not be logged off if you are running a long job with no keyboard interaction...this is not true of many other approaches to do something like Logmon.

We hope this answers your questions about how Logmon operates, but don't hesitate to ask additional questions...

LOGMON / UNIX

Do your users forget to log out? It's hard to do a backup if terminals are logged in.
What about security - If you leave your terminal logged in, anyone can come when you are not there and use your CRT.
Do you need a product that:
- Keeps people from tying up computer resources...
- Controls inactivity...
- Gracefully logs people out if their terminal is idle for a specified period... (Graceful even for users of PI/Open, Universe, Unidata, Informix, or other database packages.)

You need LOGMON! Keep your computer system under control with this software package.

LOGMON gives you the power to determine the logout idle times for individual users and warn them of possible logout by sending a message to the user's terminal.

LOGMON is configurable with a number of useful options and is easy to use - like all of our products.

Features include:

Logmon monitors the cpu usage of each user and their child processes, to determine who is really idle. Thus we won't log off a user running a cpu bound job with no keyboard activity.
You can control what happens when a user is to be logged out. A script can be executed that invokes Sybase, Universe, Informix, Unidata, etc., to gracefully cause a user to exit their applications. LOGMON does not just "kill" the process!
Warning time prior to logout can be set in minutes.
User-defined warning message.
Business hours option - allowed idle time can vary by time of day.
Interval between checks of user activity may be changed.
Verification of inactivity prior to actual logout.
Wildcard option on user-ids.

If you decide to order, the price for Logmon varies by your system size. For up to 20 users, $300. For 21-100 users, $600. For 101-200 users, $900. And an unlimited number of users on a single system, $1200. International customers incur an additional $100 per order charge if a manual and software need to be shipped. Discounts for multiple systems are available.

There is an annual optional maintenance fee that is due one year after your purchase that is based on 20 percent of the license purchase price. The maintenance is included for the first year.

For more information contact Computronics at 630/941-7767. You can also get information on Peek or our other system administrator tools for the UNIX manager.

                             Computronics
                         4N165 Wood Dale Road
                     Addison, Illinois  60101 USA
                        Phone:   630/941-7767
                          Fax:   630/941-7714
                     Email:  info@computronics.com
                   www:  http://www.computronics.com