Dear Aki,

The problem is not that computers are unable to handle the situation.
It is just that humans have declared that tokens should expire on
a regular basis.  The only way to renew the token is to authenticate
by typing the password again.  The idea is that a person who snoops
into your office during your long absence can steal some of your
privileges.  To be safe one should lock/unlock every time one leaves
the machine!  I think making tokens of 24 hours validity is a
compromise that was imposed on us.  I think making the tokens last
any longer is not very productive.  My suggestion is to lock the
screen automatically, and make the screen unlocking, which requires
typing in password, automatically acquire a token.

Sridhara

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Prof. Sridhara Rao Dasu                         Department of Physics
dasu@hep.wisc.edu                             University of Wisconsin
http://www.hep.wisc.edu/~dasu                    4289 Chamberlin Hall
608-262-3678 ( Office )                        1150 University Avenue
408-829-6625 (Wireless)                        Madison, WI 53706, USA


On Mar 10, 2008, at 11:17 AM, Akikazu Hashimoto via UW-HEP Help System  
wrote:

>
> Thanks for the reply.
>
> I consider mail client as a program which runs in the background. I am
> not engaged in it actively all the time, but respond to alerts. Since
> situations of being away from the desk/office happens quite
> intermittently in a typical day, paying attention to closing the
> application every time (or paying attention to when the AFS token are
> likely to expire) seems like unnecessary user involvement on something
> which computers are otherwise very good at handling.
>
> -aki
>
> ----------
> status: resolved -> chatting
>
> ______________________________________
> UW-HEP Help System <help@hep.wisc.edu>
> <https://help.hep.wisc.edu/issue5149>
> ______________________________________