I tried using the TMOUT shell variable to achieve an automatic logout after a certain time of inactivity. This is working well in pseudo terminals (/dev/pts/...): when the time expires the shell window closes.

In ttys, however, the shell performs the logout as expected, but then does not show the login prompt and remains somehow frozen; if logged as ordinary user I can not write anything, while if logged as root I can write but anything I write (escape char included) produces any effects at all except appearing on the screen.

I suppose the terminal does not automatically restart after the automatic logout.
Is this a normal behaviour (I'm running Fedora9)?
How can I fix it?
And, by the way, how can I restart or reset a tty from another one?

Thanks for any help

Curious. I don't know the solution to the problem you describe but I use TMOUT on machines at work and it works fine on tty1-6. Log in, wait X minutes, there's a beep and the login prompt comes up. Do you see the message about the session having been closed due to inactivity?

We use SLED 10 rather than Fedora but what you describe doesn't sound like normal behaviour.

Anyone knowing the solution to the problem (how to restart or reset a tty from another one)?

Find the pid for the shell by examining the output of ps and then kill that process.

Thanks for the advice, but that actually was one of my first attempts. The command does not show any process associated to the frozen terminal. However, if I switch to it I can see this:
The cursor is not blinking.
The terminal seems to be just frozen in such a state, not responding to any input from the keyboard. That's why I'm looking for a way to reset it.

Of course I'd also like to know why an exit command produces such an effect, but that's another question...