last command output is wrong

[Jeganathan Venkitasamy]

Hi,

We have a HP-UX 11.0 server. When an FTP connection is made to this server and exited properly, "last" command out put shows proper login & logout time. But when an FTP session timed out of inactivity, last command output shows the FTP connection as " still logged in".
How to fix this problem? Is there any patch ?

Thanks in advance.

Thanks & regards,
Jegi,
NBC, New York

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

An ungraceful loss of connectivity may have caused this. If you wish to eliminate this entry from your /var/adm/wtmp file, do this:

# /usr/sbin/acct/fwtmp < /var/adm/wtmp > /tmp/wtmp

At this point, you may edit the /tmp/wtmp file, since it is a ASCII file.

# /usr/sbin/acct/fwtmp -ic < /tmp/wtmp > /var/adm/wtmp

...JRF...

[Jeganathan Venkitasamy]

Thanks JRF for your response.
Your reply guides to edit wtmp file. But I would like to make system aware of FTP disconnections. Do we have any patch for this ?

Thanks & regards,
Jegi

[Michael Tully]

Hi,

For the particular session that you are
tracing, is there an entry in the syslog
file? and what does it say?
By default the inactivity of an
ftp session will timeout after 15 minutes.
If the session terminates abnormally the
'last' program will not report it's ending.
This usually happens with users sessions
if they are logged in when a system is
rebooted.

In answer to you question about a patch,
I would imagine that this type of problem
would get a low priority fix even if it
has been reported. I have March 2001 on
most of my systems and the problem still
exists.


HTH
-Michael