Running top on system console without being logged on

[Anthony Atkielski]

Reko Turja writes:

RT> Actually not command line options as such, but you can make a login
RT> class for the top user in /etc/login.conf and feed the options via TOP
RT> environment variable from there.
RT>
RT> You cant shell out from top and renicing from non root account is 
RT> impossible (except dropping the niceness of your own process). I think
RT> the approach is secure enough and if you give "topper" good enough 
RT> password or deny logon from anywhere except from console, everything
RT> should be ok. Of course if the terminal is accessible to others than
RT> administrative staff, giving out the usernames can be a risk, but you
RT> can use the usernumbers option to avoid giving out the usernames.
RT>
RT> Did myself something very similar with a IPless firewall between a while
RT> back but I ran vmstat in the console instead. Good one glance monitoring
RT> without the need of logging on the machine itself.

I created a special user that logs directly into top.  I don't run
telnet or anything so login isn't possible from anywhere else, and it's
a plain user account with a good password.  It seems to work pretty
well.

-- 
Anthony