Force logout a user

Question

I When I logged into the machine as root and typed who to see which users are logged in, I found somebody else too logged in as root

devuser   pts/0        2011-11-18 09:55 (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx)
root      pts/1        2011-11-18 09:56 (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx)
testuser  pts/2        2011-11-18 14:54 (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx)
root      pts/3        2011-11-18 14:55 (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx)

How can I force a root user at pts/3 to logout?

Answer 1

You terminate a session by killing its parent process, called the session leader. Find out which process it is with:

ps -dN|grep pts/3

Answer 2

To kill and logout a user, you can send KILL signal. Type the following command:

# skill -KILL -u vivek

Check these links for more information:

• http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/howto-linux-kill-and-logout-users.html
• http://www.serverschool.com/server-security/how-to-kill-a-user-session-on-a-linux-server/

Answer 3

Improving a bit Fabel's answer above:

\# *for pid in $(for ptsn in $(w | grep **user_name** | grep pts | awk '{print $2}'); do ps -dN | grep "$ptsn " | awk '{print $1}' ; done); do kill -9 $pid; done*