Solaris lock is, as its name suggests, an implementation of the lock program for Solaris. Inspired by its BSD namesake, Solaris lock is a program that locks a terminal session until a password is correctly typed in. In an X environment, lock will lock only the session in which it is invoked, unlike a screen lock which locks the whole screen.

Lock is an open source program, available under the terms of the CDDL. It has been tested on Solaris 8 to 10, on both SPARC and x86 architectures. If built on Solaris 10 or newer, lock will use process privileges.

The latest version of lock is version 1.1. From this page you can download the source code and pre-built packages (which install into /opt/local) for Solaris 10 on SPARC and x86. These packages must be installed using the pkgadd command.

Here is lock's man page:

User Commands                                             lock(1)

NAME
     lock - lock a terminal session

SYNOPSIS
     lock [ -p ] [ -t timeout ] | [ -V ]

DESCRIPTION
     The lock command locks the terminal session in which  it  is
     run  until the correct password is entered.  By default, the
     invoking user's login password is  used,  but  this  can  be
     overridden  by  specifying the -p option.  Entering the root
     password will also unlock the session.

OPTIONS
     The following options are supported:

     -p   Prompt for  a  password  to  be  used  instead  of  the
          invoker's login password.

     -t timeout
          By default, a session remains locked indefinately until
          a  correct  password is entered.  Using this option, it
          is possible to specify a timeout, after which the  lock
          process   will  terminate.   Because  of  the  security
          implications this  behaviour  engenders,  specifying  a
          timeout  should be avoided if possible, and the default
          infinite timeout used instead.

     -V   Print which version of lock is running, then exit.

EXIT STATUS
     The following exit values are returned:
     0    Successful completion.
     >0   An error occurred.

ATTRIBUTES
     See  attributes(5)  for  descriptions   of   the   following
     attributes:

     _______________________________________
    |   ATTRIBUTE TYPE   |  ATTRIBUTE VALUE|
    |_______________________________________
    | Availability       |  RICHTlock      |
    | Interface Stability|  Evolving       |
    |____________________|_________________|

SEE ALSO
     attributes(5)

AUTHOR
     Rich Teer.

lock 1.1           Last change: 15 August 2005                  1