LockVC -- vga console-locking-program.

lockvc

Start lockvc -help to get a complete list of options.

You're familiar with the situation: You leave your computer alone to get a bottle of the world's most famous soft drink, and when you come back, your terminal's taken, your data's lost, your resources destroyed, and the system's admin is asking you about those postings you've made on alt.binaries.pictures.erotica. Now it is too late to be sorry. You should have known better: This happened a thousand times before. Until now...

LockVC is a console-locking-program combined with some nifty vga-screensavers. The version at this date (July 2001) is 4.0.5. Executing LockVC on a virtual console brings up a randomly chosen vga-screensaver (that doesn't really save your screen, though). To select a screensaver, run lockvc -help for a complete list.

All virtual consoles get locked, i.e. you cannot change to another VC and you can't stop the program by pressing any key-combos (apart from ctrl-alt-delete, if not disabled by your admin). You can only exit the program by entering your system-password. Root's password will also terminate lockvc. The amount of time, that the VCs can be locked may be limited by your system's admin. This will be displayed on executing lockvc. If you fail to exit lockvc within this time, lockvc will terminate all your processes and log you out.

Lockvc can run as a daemon to lock the console if it goes idle. Details are in the /usr/share/doc/lockvc/README.gz

Svgalib is required on your system and lockvc has to be run with root-privileges. To make the program available to any users, lockvc is installed setuid by default. Use dpkg-statoverride(8) if you want to change this. Only standard vga-modes are used. This should work on any reasonable machine.

LockVC was written by Matthias Straub, University of Karlsruhe, Germany (s_straub@ira.uka.de).

Shadow Password Support and Man Page added by Eddie Beaumont (Morlok) (morlok@abyss.apana.org.au).

PAM Support and daemon option added by Lawson Whitney (whitnl73@juno.com).

LockVC eats up all cpu-time :(