topic Re: ff and finger in Operating System - HP-UX

ff and finger

Linda Lux — Wed, 12 May 2004 10:53:12 GMT

My "ff loginname" never returns an answer
and my "finger loginname" is not instant - it takes considerably longer than usual to return an answer

Re: ff and finger

doug mielke — Wed, 12 May 2004 11:25:36 GMT

Is finger the only function that is slow?
Does sar 5 5 give zero idle time?
Does top report high load (oveR 10?)

Re: ff and finger

Linda Lux — Wed, 12 May 2004 11:33:37 GMT

sar 5 5

HP-UX K460 B.11.00 U 9000/889 05/12/04

11:31:18 %usr %sys %wio %idle
11:31:23 27 21 49 3
11:31:28 30 24 44 3
11:31:33 29 21 46 5
11:31:38 28 22 43 6
11:31:43 28 19 46 6

Average 28 21 46 5

Re: ff and finger

Linda Lux — Wed, 12 May 2004 11:51:02 GMT

at 11:50 it was

HP-UX K460 B.11.00 U 9000/889 05/12/04

11:48:29 %usr %sys %wio %idle
11:48:34 20 18 46 16
11:48:39 21 19 35 25
11:48:44 21 17 40 22
11:48:49 24 22 35 19
11:48:54 22 19 51 9

Average 22 19 41 18

Re: ff and finger

Linda Lux — Wed, 12 May 2004 16:26:31 GMT

still having the delay in "finger"

Linda

Re: ff and finger

Jos de Ruiter — Thu, 13 May 2004 03:17:07 GMT

Hi,

Look true "command #top" what the problem is.
With q you can exit this.

Groetjes,
JdR

Re: ff and finger

Fabio Ettore — Thu, 13 May 2004 04:13:26 GMT

Hi Linda,

- about ff:

man ff:
ff(generic) - list file names and statistics for a file system

Why do you launch it
'ff loginname'? As far as I know 'ff' is about information on filesystems.

- about finger:
finger reads /etc/utmp file; maybe it is bad. Then try:

# > /etc/utmp
This will trim to zero the utmp file.
Then try finger.

HTH.

Best regards,
Ettore

Re: ff and finger

Linda Lux — Thu, 13 May 2004 08:12:17 GMT

I actually have an .alias file in my directory that allows me to to do a
ff username - the actual command does the finger command which is taking forever.
Linda

Re: ff and finger

Fred Martin_1 — Thu, 13 May 2004 08:36:56 GMT

Regarding the long delay in respose from 'finger', when was the last time you cleared wtmp? I think 'finger' shows the last login information and needs to look it up. I've seen delays too, when wtmp is large.

Re: ff and finger

Linda Lux — Thu, 13 May 2004 08:40:22 GMT

does rebooting the system do this clearing up or do I have to run a special command

Linda

Re: ff and finger

Fred Martin_1 — Thu, 13 May 2004 08:45:31 GMT

# cat /dev/null > /var/adm/wtmp

That will clear the file. Before you do it though, just realize that all the data from the 'last' command comes from there, so historical information will be lost.

But the file grows without bounds if you don't clear it; so I clear it now and then anyway.

Re: ff and finger

Fred Martin_1 — Thu, 13 May 2004 08:47:11 GMT

I'm curious, before you clear it if you haven't already, check the size.

# ls -l /var/adm/wtmp

Re: ff and finger

Linda Lux — Thu, 13 May 2004 08:55:32 GMT

this is the size

-rw-rw-r-- 1 adm adm 58560 May 13 08:52 /var/adm/wtmp

also I have a product called double vision running that goes on this info
so I really don't want to wipe out the history during the day, otherwise our helpdesk can't doublevision to the user already logged in if they are having problems

Linda

Re: ff and finger

Fred Martin_1 — Thu, 13 May 2004 09:12:33 GMT

Well, that certainly is not large - mine is over 7 MB at the moment. No need to clear yours.

So that can't be the problem. Sorry I thought we were on to it.

Re: ff and finger

Fred Martin_1 — Thu, 13 May 2004 09:21:33 GMT

I was just re-reading and there is a note above that it might be the /etc/utmp file, if it's corrupt. That could be true. For that matter I've had wtmp go corrupt as well.

/etc/utmp holds data about who's logged in currently. /etc/wtmp is a history of past logins.

Do a man on utmp or wtmp and you'll get all the info on these files.

Again though, /etc/utmp and /var/adm/wtmp do contain useful info, you'll need to decide when it's OK to clear them.