expect and who -m

[A. Daniel King_1]

Hi, folks.

I'm trying out expect and having a bit of a headache. Expect 5.38.0, HP-UX 11i.

I'm using something like:

...
spawn /bin/su - joeuser
expect "Password:" { send "Big_Secret\r" }
...

But when I get to the /etc/profile, who -m does not work! Any ideas? This becomes important as who -m indicates the inital login user (regardless of su), and I've got some scripts which rely upon this for security.

who -m returns exactly nothing. Normal who works.

Thanks in advance.

[S.K. Chan]

Corrupted utmp and wtmp files maybe ? Have you tried recycled those files ? What about..
$ who am i
Does that return anything at all ?

[A. Daniel King_1]

who am i also returns nothing.

[A. Daniel King_1]

Even after nullifying wtmp, etc. no information from who am i!

[Michael Steele_2]

To zero out:
>/var/adm/wtmp

Right permissions?

644

If not there:

touch /var/adm/wtmp

See 'man last' or finger.

[malay boy]

whoami command used the /etc/utmp.May be your /etc/utmp having some problem.
I guest you can remove it and add it back.

# rm /etc/utmp
# touch /etc/utmp

make sure the permission in this file are correct.

[Donny Jekels]

try

set -- $(who -Rm)

als check your /etc/profile, if there is any neat tricks to kick you out if you don't come in from a regular tty or console.

I'll check this thread back later. might have a solution for you. not at the office now.

[A. Daniel King_1]

I work around this with a variation upon:

who -mTR > /dev/null
if [ $? -ne 0 ]
then
who -mTR
else
echo make up some values
fi

[A. Daniel King_1]

Make that -ne an -eq ...

[Donny Jekels]

see the attached script. it will help you out.

it has been tested and it works.