The Athena Rules of Use specify that you may not leave your workstation unattended for more than 20 minutes. If you are going to be away from your workstation for any length of time, you should not just walk away. When you do this, you are inviting an unscrupulous person to do anything they want to with your account. Anything that they choose to do could easily be blamed on you. Also, your machine might be accidentally rebooted because it may not be possible to tell how long you have been gone. If you want to safely leave your machine for some period of time, you should SAVE ALL YOUR WORK. This will ensure that whatever happens, you won't lose anything that you were doing before you left. You should also lock your screen. This will keep anyone from doing anything but log you out while you are gone. You can use the xss screensaver program for this. Type: xlock This will immediately start the screensaver and lock the computer. When you want to unlock the screen, hit a key or press a mouse button and then type your password and press RETURN. By default, your workstation will automatically start its screensaver after 10 minutes of idle time, and lock after 1 additional minute. If you would like to adjust these settings, you can run: xscreensaver-demo & If you prefer having a graphical interface to activate the screensaver, instead of the xlock command described above, you can alternatively run: xss-button & This should give you a small icon. To activate the screen saver, push the middle mouse button with the mouse cursor on top of the icon and drag the mouse to "Activate Screensaver" on the menu. Let go, and your screen should lock. Please do not leave your screen locked for an extended period of time; workstations are in short supply much of the time, and if you leave your screen locked for a long time, someone may log you out or reboot your workstation. The Athena Rules of Use state that any workstation which is locked for more than twenty minutes can be rebooted if another user wants to use the workstation, and in fact, after twenty minutes, xss will give users the option of logging you out. Last updated: $Date: 2004/03/15 17:24:55 $