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Perform a background log out via Fast User Switching System
If I want to log out of one account and then switch to another, there is a delay while I wait for the current account to finish logging out and show me the login screen. There is an easy way to eliminate that delay with Fast User Switching (FUS).

When you choose 'Log Out' from the Apple menu a dialog pops up with a countdown. Ignore that and use FUS to switch to another account like normal. Once the countdown is complete, the first account will log out in the background by itself.

Note that this only works if nothing in the first account blocks the log out. So, if a document is open with some unsaved changes, a dialog sheet will ask to save changes and this will stop the log out process.
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Perform a background log out via Fast User Switching | 4 comments | Create New Account
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Perform a background log out via Fast User Switching
Authored by: pheed on Apr 02, '04 05:37:29PM

You know you can log out pretty quickly without a lot of clicking if you use the following keyboard shortcut:

Command+Option+Shift+Q

The option tells the system to bypass the confirmation dialog box.

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re: bypassing the dialog (Perform a background log out via Fast User Switching)
Authored by: brandonlgolm on Apr 02, '04 06:45:27PM

The original poster meant that he doesn't want to wait for all applications to close (a normal part of the logout process, even when bypassing the confirmation dialog).



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re: bypassing the dialog (Perform a background log out via Fast User Switching)
Authored by: taxi on Apr 03, '04 08:42:19AM

A really quick way to shutdown: in the terminal type

$ sudo shutdown -h now

(and type in your admin password)

This is really useful if you are not at your Mac, and can't be bothered crossing the room...

Warning! this will shut down immediately with no warning!

If you liked the Classic Shutdown box, Ctrl-Eject will pop this up.



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re: bypassing the dialog (Perform a background log out via Fast User Switching)
Authored by: src-kc8rmb on Apr 03, '04 01:17:14PM

Or, the brute force Unix way to tell ALL of your processes to cleanup and exit immediately as if the system was shutting down NOW (w/o actually rebooting), is:

tcsh% kill -TERM -1

(A) Don't do this as root or using sudo -- you'll blow away the whole system.

(B) Don't do this if you care about your data or configuration in any open applications -- these normally take time to shutdown because they are cleaning things up and saving unsaved/cache data.

(C) Don't listed to people who tell you to use a kill -KILL or kill -9 -- until you understand about signal handlers and realize that it's the per-process equivalent to flipping off the power on a running system.

(D) Because of (B), Understand that there's a chance you might have to reboot anyway, and an outside chance that some process won't cleanup correctly. However, this same chance exists with shutdown or most other "express" methods besides the Apple blessed.

But hey, if you want to juggle knives, do it as safely as possible.



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