Running top without a shell -- more questions

[Loren M. Lang]

On Sat, Feb 05, 2005 at 12:53:43PM +0100, Anthony Atkielski wrote:
> I've set up a user account that has top for its shell (instead of one of
> the standard shells).  As expected, when I log into this account, I
> immediately find myself in top, and if I stop top, I'm instantly logged
> out.  That's what I want.  I use it to have a continuously running
> console status display without the need to be actually logged in to a
> (potentially dangerous) shell.
> 
> However, I note that there is a login process under root that just sits
> there, and top runs as a child of that under my chosen user name. Is
> there a way to get top to run by itself, like csh or some other shell,
> with the login process out of the system? What causes login to go away
> in the normal case, when the shell is actually a shell program?  Isn't
> the user fully logged in by the time control passes to top?

Right now I have two login processes running, one for each virtual
console I am logged in at the moment, though my ssh login shells don't
have any login processes for them.  My guess is that there staying
around for some cleanup work to do at logout.  I think it might be
related to the pam session management modules like changing certain file
permissions when a shell logs in and out and it just happens that only
my virtual consoles need to do any cleanup jobs.  If it is pam doing it,
you might be able change it's configuration, but I don't think it's a
big deal security wise.

> 
> -- 
> Anthony
> 
> 
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