topic Re: whoami in Operating System - Linux

whoami

Ramesh_20 — Mon, 17 Nov 2003 14:04:25 GMT

Hi,
I am having a weird problem in linux boxes. They are behaving indifferently to the whoami command. When i type whoami its showing a different username and also the terminal pts/2 for 5 or 6 users. I understand that each user needs to be assigned a different terminal like pts/1 pts/2 etc...but how come one tty pts/2 is used for too many users. Is that affecting the whoami to display the correct user? Any help appreciated

Re: whoami

Jerome Henry — Mon, 17 Nov 2003 15:22:04 GMT

It could be normal if all of them are connected remote to your linux box. Is it the case ?

J

Re: whoami

Ramesh_20 — Mon, 17 Nov 2003 15:34:27 GMT

But i am logged in as user-1 and but it is showing as user-2!!!We are having problems while executing some scripts for monitoring and totally that screws up entire stuff

Re: whoami

Jerome Henry — Mon, 17 Nov 2003 15:41:31 GMT

Check user-1 and user-2 uid in /etc/passwd or /etc/shadow, and check with 'who', 'w' and 'users' who the system sees as logged in.

There seems to be a mess with your authentication. Are you logged local or remote ?

J

Re: whoami

Stuart Browne — Mon, 17 Nov 2003 19:04:27 GMT

Sounds like your /var/run/utmp is up the creek.

'who', 'w', 'whoami', 'last', and all of those sorts of tools use /var/run/utmp to keep track user logins.

Re: whoami

Stuart Browne — Mon, 17 Nov 2003 19:06:32 GMT

Oh sugar. Forgot to say how to fix it :P

Get everybody off the machine, zero out the file (move it aside is probably best), sign in and check again.