[ale] bogus idel time for user

[john at johnheim.net (John Heim)]

Anyone know how a machine can get a bogus idel time for a user? I have a 
problem with users getting kicked off their machines for being idel for too 
long. Problem is, they just logged on. If I finger user, it shows he logged 
on today but his idle time is 39 days. That's a problem because I have our 
machines configured to log people out if they are idel for more than 4 days. 
How can a user have been idel for 39 days when they just logged on? I 
thought maybe he was logged in more than once but who shows just one login 
for him.  Below is the output from the who and the finger commands. I 
modified it slightly to hide the user's actual identity.

# who
johnsmith     tty8         Jan 30 08:32 (:0)
# finger johnsmith
Login: johnsmith                              Name: John Smith
Directory: /fac/johnsmith                    Shell: /bin/tcsh
Office:  555-5555,  555 Van Vleck
On since Mon Jan 30 08:32 (CST) on tty8 from :0
   39 days idle
     (messages off)
No mail.
No Plan.