Automatic screen lock when leaving desk

Polytropon freebsd at edvax.de
Wed Jul 15 01:36:33 UTC 2009


On Tue, 14 Jul 2009 18:33:50 -0600, Chad Perrin <perrin at apotheon.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 12:35:24AM +0200, Polytropon wrote:
> > 
> > To make it more complicated, what about wearing some specific USB device
> > on your clothes, attached to a chain, and when you leave the computer,
> > it will pop out of the USB socket and therefore cause "xlock" to be
> > called? :-)
> 
> Does FreeBSD still have the kernel panic when mounted USB storage devices
> are detached without unmounting problem? 

Hmmm... How do other operating systems react if you suddenly remove a
direct storage media that is just read from or written to? Do other
operating systems go like, "Oh wow, the hard disk just disappeared,
so then I will write the data on another hard disk..." :-)

As far as I know, there are some tools like DBUS and HAL that make
using USB sticks more easy in terms of "automount if plugged in,
autoumount when removed", but I have to be honest: I don't use any
automount feature (due to security reasons), so in my opinion it's
always safe to first umount, then remove.



> If so, you could just mount a
> USB storage device, and unplug it when you leave the keyboard.  Then
> your computer would be safe from snooping, because it would kernel panic
> every time you walk away!

I first thought about that, too, but in my opinion it's not needed to mount
whatever you plug in as USB device, maybe a defective MP3 player made from
crap, a memory stick or who knows what. The lock / unlock action could be
assigned to the simple presence of the device.

And: Yes, I know, that's a very stupid idea. :-)



-- 
Polytropon
>From Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...


More information about the freebsd-questions mailing list