who/utmpd hangs, but just for one specific user

[Daniel Olops]

Hello all,

I'm facing some "esoteric" problems with the command 'who' and with utmpd.

When a specific user - and just him - issues the 'who' command, it hangs and both 'who' and 'utmpd' start consuming a high CPU ratio until we send a SIGTERM to 'who'. If we disable utmpd, 'who' works nice. There are no other users facing this problem.

The system is a 11iV3 with the latest quality pack and no security or critical patches missing. The hardware is a rp3410, not heavy-loaded and with enough disk space available.

I've attached some tracing of the 'utmpd' process made with tusc, during the execution of 'who'. The file 'monnerat.log' refers to a normal user, and 'gama.log' is the affected one.

Any ideas?

Regards,

Daniel

[Dennis Handly]

There seems to be a lot of thread creation. (You should use the tusc -l option to print all lwpids.)

You'll need to contact the Response Center to track down your problem.