[10.11.x] Need to disable auto-logout but keep screen lock on

[endor-moon]

Our animation students are seeing a problem in our Yosemite labs where they begin a render in Maya and the computer tries to auto-logout, killing the render. The machine doesn't actually logout because the unsaved changes in Maya prevents that. I didn't specify auto-logout so I'm not sure where the machine is getting this as a default behaviour.

The behaviour I would like to see is auto-logout permanently disabled and students should be able to enable screen lock so they can protect their renders while they go home for sleep. The lab systems automatically do a hard reboot at 6 AM every morning (reboot now in a script kicked off by cron).

This all worked fine under Mavericks. Under Yosemite, it seems the auto-logout can be turned off if the student disables screen lock in the GUI: System Preferences, Security & Privacy, uncheck "Require password [x seconds or minutes] after sleep or screen saver begins, then "Are you sure you want to turn off screen lock, [Turn Off Screen Lock]. Which seems to turn off auto-logout but leaves the machine wide open for other students to mess with. They'll put signs on the machines, "rendering, do not touch" but it seems like a waste of paper.

After Casper Imaging, I run a script to set Energy Saver settings as follows:

#!/bin/sh
# Power management settings

# erase any existing schedule
pmset repeat cancel
# startup or wake every weekday at 4:45 AM
pmset repeat wakeorpoweron MTWRF 04:45:00
# wake on magic packet
pmset womp 1
# restart after power fails, always
systemsetup -setrestartpowerfailure on
# never sleep, disks never, displays in 30
pmset -a sleep 0 disksleep 0 displaysleep 30
# darkwakes should be off if supported
pmset -c darkwakes 0

I'm wondering if I've done something wrong in the power settings script above to cause this behaviour and how to disable auto-logout permanently. I found some commands to turn it off but it only seems to work until the next reboot:

defaults write GlobalPreferences com.apple.autologout.AutoLogOutDelay 0
osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to set require password to wake of security preferences to true'

[bpavlov · Accepted solution]

Do you have any configuration profiles applied to the computer? If you are and one of them has the Login Window payload, make sure that you have "Log Out Users After: X minute of inactivity" is UNCHECKED.

[endor-moon]

Hi @bpavlov

Actually, there is a policy named Disable Auto-Logout that is triggered at recurring check-in, but it appears I forgot to call the script, which I believe I downloaded from JAMF. I have modified the policy so we'll see what happens. Thanks for the tip.