$ cat /etc/profile.d/timeout.sh TMOUT=600 readonly TMOUT export TMOUT That file is created on (almost, see below) each and every machine I administer as

$ cat /etc/profile.d/timeout.sh TMOUT=600 readonly TMOUT export TMOUT That file is created on (almost, see below) each and every machine I administer as part of the initial configuration/provisioning process. By itself, it's nothing spectacular, but it sounds like it would have prevented this incident (as would have several other things, of course). For the hosts with csh as the default, it's: $ cat /etc/profile.d/timeout.csh set -r autologout=10