Need Delayed Auto Login

[mdmcneff]

Hello,

Our school uses only Mac workstations in our labs.  We are planning to install the  Qube! worker software on all of our workstations so that we can rent licenses of Qube! at the end of the semester, when our farm gets used heavily.  However, since After Effects is part of our render farm we have a slight problem due to the fact that After Effects will not render as a service in the background.

What we need then is for our workstations to automatically log in as the Qube! Proxy user once a student logs out.  However, the auto login would need to be delayed by about 5 minutes to give student a chance to log in before Qube! Proxy gets automatically logged in.

Here's a breakdown of the sequence of events we are in need of for our workstations:
1) A student logs out.
2) The workstation goes to the login screen
3) After 5 minutes of displaying the login screen, the workstation automatically logs in as Qube! Proxy.

Does anyone know of a way to do this on a Mac?

Thanks,
Michael

[jburk]

I believe if you set up a user as auto-login, it only logs in automatically on start-up, not when another user logs out.  So a student would log out and then re-start the workstation.

There are apps out there that can delay the restart, but the only ones I've seen work in the user session, when the user initiates the logout while they're logged in, and not from the login window.  If the shutdown is cancelled, I the user remains logged in.

You need something that hooks a timer up to the "restart" button that's present at the login screen.  I've browsed the Apple App store and haven't seen anything like that.

[mdmcneff]

Hi John,

Thanks for your thoughts on this subject.  I suppose that it might be possible for our school to have our students restart their machines instead of logging out.  If we set the machine to auto-login as Qube! Proxy, then that should work.

Thanks,
Michael