topic Re: A who question? in Operating System - HP-UX

A who question?

mckiers — Mon, 08 Apr 2002 21:55:31 GMT

I was wondering can anyone tell me what the "EMPTY SLOT" entries are when one does "who -a".

Re: A who question?

Michael Tully — Mon, 08 Apr 2002 22:20:16 GMT

Could you please provide output of the 'who -a' ?

Re: A who question?

S.K. Chan — Mon, 08 Apr 2002 22:26:26 GMT

What's "EMPTY SLOT" ? Since "-a" option processes /etc/utmp file, I have the feeling you do have doubt if "who" is giving you the right output ? The output I got looks like this ..

. system boot Feb 21 15:06
. run-level 3 Feb 21 15:06 3 0 S
vxenable . Feb 21 15:06 0:09 49 id=vxen term=0 exit=0
bcheckrc . Feb 21 15:06 0:09 50 id=brc1 term=0 exit=0
cat . Feb 21 15:06 0:09 67 id=cprt term=0 exit=0
rm . Feb 21 15:06 0:09 68 id=ems1 term=0 exit=0
cat . Feb 21 15:06 0:09 69 id=ems2 term=0 exit=0
sh . Feb 21 15:06 0:09 70 id=link term=0 exit=0
rc . Feb 21 15:08 0:09 73 id=sqnc term=0 exit=0
LOGIN console Feb 21 15:08 old 1523 system console
krsd . Feb 21 15:08 0:09 1524 id=krsd
sfd . Feb 21 15:08 0:09 1526 id= sfd
samd . Feb 21 15:08 0:09 1527 id=samd
touch . Feb 21 15:08 0:09 1528 id=ems3 term=0 exit=0
p_client . Feb 21 15:08 0:09 1529 id=ems4
.....

Re: A who question?

Steve Steel — Tue, 09 Apr 2002 10:02:42 GMT

Hi

Just a guess that you have a passwd file problem and the parser works badly.

Supply the who -a data and run pwck to check the password file.

Steve Steel

Re: A who question?

Steven Gillard_2 — Tue, 09 Apr 2002 10:09:07 GMT

Exactly as it states - they're simply 'empty slots' in the /etc/utmpx binary file. This file is updated when a user logs in/out so its quite normal for it to have these 'holes' in it. Usually these empty slots are ignored by utilities like who but they will be displayed when you use the -a option.

Regards,
Steve