[CentOS] screen locking - pam and xscreensaver

Wed Jan 16 20:32:56 UTC 2008
Scott Ehrlich <scott at MIT.EDU>

For an out-of-box Centos install that utilizes PAM for xscreensaver within 
both gnome and kde, what factors would lead to xscreensaver not being able 
to properly unlock the user?   I reviewed the logs and nothing helped.

I performed ldd on xscreensaver and an ls -l on each dependency proved 
they were all there.

The system uses local /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow files for 
authentication - no NIS or LDAP or Kerberos.

If Xwindows was to be disabled, and only tty was used, what would be the 
best option for ensuring the logged-in session was locked after a 
determined amount of inactivity>

Also, if the user stepped away from the system and wanted to manually lock 
it, what is the best tty screen-locking utility? I reviewed vlock, but 
after prompting me for my password, it then prompted for root's.  That was 
less than helpful.

Thanks.

Scott