Logging out of the System

When you are finished using the system or when you leave your terminal unattended, log out. Logging out is an essential aspect of system security. Leaving a terminal unattended is a frighteningly efficient way to defeat many of the carefully designed security features of OpenVMS. Seeing an unattended terminal, someone could easily approach your terminal and steal or destroy sensitive information. The intruder could examine sensitive files, e-mail them around the world, or damage or delete them.

Many users may think, "I don't have any access to sensitive information, so leaving my terminal unattended can't hurt," but it's not as simple as that. A skilled intruder may be able to take advantage of seemingly innocuous information, such as learning the names of other machines on the network, usernames of other users, or an almost unimaginable number of other details.

Your system manager may have installed software that automatically logs users off after a certain period of inactivity. If so, you should not attempt to defeat this software by making your idle process appear to be attended.

To log out of the system, use the LOGOUT or LOGOUT/FULL command. Note that the terms log off and log out may be used interchangeably, but the OpenVMS terminology is log out:

     $ LOGOUT       MIKE         logged out at 12-DEC-2002 19:07:39.58 

or

     $ LOGOUT/FULL       MIKE       logged out at 12-DEC-2002 19:08:52.31       Accounting information:       Buffered I/O count:             127         Peak working set size:    1771       Direct I/O count:                50         Peak page file size:      5955       Page faults:                  10417         Mounted volumes:             0       Charged CPU time:           0 00:00:04.80   Elapsed time:    0 00:00:48.02