Re: locking all terminals w/ a single command?

[Matthew Weigel <Matthew_Weigel@ursa-minor.fac.cs.cmu.edu>]

> i want to be able to walk away from my system for a few minutes w/o
> having to switch among all virtual terminals and run lock on all of
> them separately.

This is not meant to be patronizing, but have you looked at using
screen?  It supports a locking feature which supports locking all the
screens (using lock, no less!).  I realize it will be a bit different
from virtual terminals, but it is also much more powerful!  It lets you
detach screens (^A-^D), and then reattach them from somewhere else
(screen -r), or even leave it connected, and when you login from
somewhere else, detach and reattach the screen in one motion (screen -d
-r).  It also supports naming/renaming screens (^A-A), and listing all
screens' names and numbers (^A-^W).  It also has a command line (^A-:)
that lets you run any of the commands (so the sequence ^A:screen -t
blah creates a new screen with title blah).

It also, of course, is supported by practically every Unix out there
and can run on serial consoles, letting you use it everywhere once
you've learned it.

You'll have to get it out of ports, though (or out of packages, since
it's widely enough used to be precompiled for most architectures) --
misc/screen.
-- 
 Matthew Weigel
 Research Systems Programmer
 mcweigel+@cs.cmu.edu