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I have a computer that is only used some of the time, and I was was wondering if there was a way to have it turn itself off after a period of inactivity.

Here's the tricky part, if I was just thinking about having it turn itself off when the GUI is idle then I think it would be significantly easier, but I'm trying to make sure I don't cut anyone off who is actively using the machine via SSH as well. The computer in question is Debian 5.0.

Is there a way of detecting if the machine is idle, as in nobody using the GUI and nobody is using the machine via SSH? If an SSH connection is open, but is not actively being used, then the computer should consider that idle.

Jeff Welling
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  • Should this be moved to stackoverflow maybe? – Jeff Welling Aug 03 '11 at 14:44
  • the question isn't particularly programming-ish, and there might be suitable answers which aren't either. – jmtd Aug 03 '11 at 15:26
  • A friend suggested DBUS, but in my brief 5 minutes of googling it didn't look like it would pay any attention to ssh connections, idle or not. I'd would be nice if I was uninformed though.. need to keep looking when I wake up. – Jeff Welling Aug 03 '11 at 15:36
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    Why would you want to shutdown a Linux computer anyway? :-) – amphetamachine Aug 03 '11 at 21:52
  • @amphetamachine Power saving. Reducing thermal output in a large cluster room. We have two Linux clusters where I work; one 69 machines, another 43: enabling power management has made a measurable difference to the heat of the rooms (which were too hot) and the electricity bill. – jmtd Aug 04 '11 at 14:49
  • Why would I want to shutdown a computer that is rarely used? Heat, power savings, noise polution (it's an old machine), security, and the obvious 'why have it on if nobody is using it' argument. If it was my desktop computer, it would stay on, but this machine is only used occasionally and I don't need a space-heater. – Jeff Welling Aug 05 '11 at 12:28

3 Answers3

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who -q

Will show who, and how many users have an open tty (i.e. at console, via X, ssh, telent) but will not show users connecting via pop, http etc

symcbean
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  • Is there a way of telling of telling what the last command they ran was (PID, to check if it's still running) and when it was executed? Do you think that could be accomplished with some changes to the bash prompt? – Jeff Welling Aug 03 '11 at 15:27
  • You'd need to be a lot more specific about what you mean. What if they started a setsid progam before logging out - would you consider their session still active? What can you not get from the bash history? – symcbean Aug 08 '11 at 20:05
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gdm / gnome-power-manager can detect this and suspend the machine appropriately. for GNOME2 Try

gconftool-2 --direct --config-source=xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults -s --type=int /apps/gnome-power-manager/timeout/sleep_computer_ac 600

and

gconftool-2 --direct --config-source=xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults -s --type=int /apps/gnome-power-manager/timeout/sleep_computer_ac 600

as root. You may need to restart gdm for the settings to take effect. (the number is seconds so 600 is 10 minutes).

under GNOME3, there is a similar pair of gsettings keys (the above silently fails).

If you aren't running GNOME, you could inspect the source of gnome-power-manager to figure out how it establishes idle-ness.

jmtd
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    gdm / gnome-power-manager can detect idle ssh connections? – Jeff Welling Aug 03 '11 at 15:32
  • idle ones? No. Active ones? I believe so. Your question suggested you didn't want to cut off people using the machine via ssh actively. If you don't want them to suspend even with idle ssh connections, please revise your question. – jmtd Aug 04 '11 at 14:48
  • Actually that sounds like exactly what I want! I'll be checking that out, thank you! Once I've verified that it will work for my purposes I'll choose your answer :) – Jeff Welling Aug 05 '11 at 12:25
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Try command xprintidle to get idle time in milliseconds.

Coc
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