Logout Users

You may need to terminate user sessions and log them off. All user login sessions are associated with a terminal device (TTY). Use the w command to establish user logins and currently running processes.

w

USER     TTY      FROM             LOGIN@   IDLE   JCPU   PCPU WHAT
root     pts/0    192.168.122.1    07:29    3.00s  0.02s  0.00s w
johndoe  pts/1    192.168.122.1    09:08    8.00s  0.00s  0.00s vi sample

In this example, the user johndoe can be kicked off the server using the pkill command.

pkill -SIGKILL -t pts/1

Summary

User sessions can be terminated by system administrators using the pkill command.

Command References:

pkill, pstree, signal and w.