help w/ CLI logouts

[biotech]

Is it possible to logout completely through the CLI without it just exiting your particular terminal session? Sometimes X wont let me logout through the menu or the key combo and I have to restart the machine to just logout. I can logout if I kill the login window app from the terminal, but that is awful messy and I dont like the idea of having to kill apps on a regular basis (Im sure it isnt healthy). Any ideas?

Also... Is there a way to communicate with a person who is logged into OSX but is NOT using the terminal? I doubt it. It would be nice for an admin to send admin messages to his/her users who are using OSX on a network without them having to use the CLI. Hopefully with OSX server and OSX clients fully released this will be an option.

 

[scruffy]

Killing programs from the command line is no problem. The only way you might get a problem is if you have to "kill -9" them.

By default, "kill" sends a signal to the program that it should to an orderly exit, ie. close all open files, terminate child processes, etc. However, "kill -9" ought to be used only as a last resort, since it doesn't give programs a chance to clean up after themselves.

As for communication with people not using the terminal, I don't know of a way. You might be able to use the "open" command to open a file on someone's desktop that contains a message you want to send, but that is hacky, and would probably end up giving users root access or something...