I've been very happy with vlock. What hangups did you run into? I admit that it has required some scripting to avoid launching it twice concurrently (via xautolock and pm-utils), and to clear its console before locking, but overall I find it secure, elegant, and worthwhile. What do you prefer about physlock?
physlock also eliminated some of the scaffolding code to deal with the multiple launches, etc. It's just a better tool solving the same problem. Recommended.
Thanks for the recommendation. I'll definitely bear it in mind for future installs, but since I put the effort into configuring vlock well, I'd like to live with it for a while more. I'd actually already read that thread when configuring vlock on my current box, and I do chvt $(cat /tmp/console.pm) on resume. It's robust when configured well, but I can see the value in a locker that requires less configuration time.