ff and finger

[Linda Lux]

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

[doug mielke]

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

[Linda Lux]

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

[Linda Lux]

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

[Linda Lux]

still having the delay in "finger"

Linda

[Jos de Ruiter]

Hi,

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

Groetjes,
JdR

[Fabio Ettore]

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

[Linda Lux]

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

[Fred Martin_1]

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.

[Linda Lux]

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

Linda

[Fred Martin_1]

# 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.

[Fred Martin_1]

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

# ls -l /var/adm/wtmp

[Linda Lux]

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

[Fred Martin_1]

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.

[Fred Martin_1]

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.