Output from "who"

[Norman Lowe]

When running the who command, what are the lines that contain a "." in place of the username? For example:

zamana2 pts/tj Jun 10 10:24
. ttypa Jun 5 09:29
chakraa pts/tk Jun 10 14:29
duttas pts/tl Jun 10 11:00
. ttypb Jun 10 07:59
shirgs99 pts/tm Jun 10 11:03
lowen pts/2 Jun 4 15:04
. ttypc Jun 10 09:34
. ttypd Jun 10 08:22
. ttype Jun 10 09:40
. ttypf Jun 10 09:41
. ttyq0 Jun 10 09:46

This doesn't seem to occur on Solaris and some of our HP-UX users are complaining that they get a "." as the username when they run "who am i".

[Martin Johnson]

Have you run "pwck /etc/passwd" to verify there are no problems with your password file?

HTH
Marty

[Paul Sperry]

A dot (.) indicates that the terminal has
seen activity in the last minute and is therefore
``current''. If more than twenty-four hours have
elapsed or the line has not been used since boot
time, the entry is marked old.

[Stefan Farrelly]

could be a corruption in /etc/utmp or /var/adm/wtmp, try copying /dev/null to them, or possible a userid has been removed from the password file so that the who command cant find the uid anymore so it replaces it with a '.' instead.

Does the same output ocurr when you run as root ? perhaps this only happens as a non-root user which may not be able to read /etc/passwd, /etc/utmp or /var/adm/wtmp

[Cheryl Griffin]

You may be in need of patch
PHSS_17421 s700_800 11.00 XClients which resolves SR 5003408989 "If you do a who -R in the session windows, the uid does not get resolved to the user name. Instead you merely get a . for the uid."

[Norman Lowe]

We use NIS+ for passwords.

So, are we saying that if the session has been used within the last minute that a dot will always replace the username? That doesn't sound right - surely would render "who am i" almost useless?

[Alex Glennie]

it's a bug wrt X11R5 clients eg xterm and hpterm, either install the patch and use /usr/contrib/bin/xterm, or try adding a '+' sign to the end of /etc/passwd or don't use either term but ask your users to use a dtterm which is built with X11R6.

[Pete Randall]

No the dot indicating activity is specific to the "who -u" command. Running who without any options is the equivalent of "who -s" which has no such "dot" output.


Pete

[Rodney Hills]

"who -u" command puts the number of minutes since last input in the field after the date/time and before the tty.

"." in this case means the user entered data less than a minute ago.

It looks like the output lines are line wrapped.

-- Rod Hills

[Norman Lowe]

The "." appears in the output of all invocations of who (who, who -s, who -u, etc.)

PHSS_17421 seems to be a 11.00 patch. We are using 11.11. Is this supposed to be fixed in 11.11 or is there an equivalent patch?

[Robert-Jan Goossens]

Take a look at next patch, there is also a patch for 11.0

http://www5.itrc.hp.com/service/patch/patchDetail.do?patchid=PHSS_28681&context=hpux:800:11:11

It does occur on Solaris too just reported the bug on monday.

Hope it helps,

Robert-Jan.

[Norman Lowe]

Installed PHSS_28681, but this hasn't helped.

However, it is definitely X-related as it doesn't happen for users that use telnet, etc. without an X window.

[Alex Glennie · Accepted solution]

Did you try my earlier suggestions 1) to the passwd file and 2) re the xterm binary being used .... you may have other xterm binaries elsewhere on the system. ie /usr/bin/X11/xterm

Lastly if your users use a dtterm does the problem occur ?

[Norman Lowe]

Have tried xterm, hpterm and dtterm

xterm will always produce a "." in the who am i output.
hpterm will always have "????" instead.
dtterm results in the username being displayed correctly.

So, we will have to look at using dtterm for now until we can find a fix.

I did try using /usr/contrib/bin/X11/xterm, but this produces the error "xterm: Error 24, errno 22: Invalid argument" if you use it with the -display flag, even though as far as I can see this should be a valid flag.

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

Try compiling from the full X11R6 compliant version:

ftp://dickey.his.com/xterm/xterm-179.tgz

configure --prefix=/pro --with-x --with-Xaw3d --disable-imake --enable-256-color --enable-wide-chars --disable-input-method --disable-tek4014 --disable-vt52 --disable-session-mgt

Xaw3d available on http://hpux.connect.org.uk/hppd/hpux/X11/Toolkits/Xaw3d-1.5/

Full Unicode support!

Enjoy, have FUN! H.Merijn

[Alex Glennie]

Remsh usually allocates streams-based device files (/dev/pts/#).
In this case hpterm or xterm allocate the device file and they use
the non-streams based device files like /dev/ttyp1.

'who am i' and similar commands obtain their information from utmp.
The entries in utmp are already corrupt (they have '????' or '.'
instead of the user name). This problem happens if hpterm or xterm
are invoked on an HP-UX 11.XX system configured as an NIS slave server
or client AND the file /etc/nsswitch.conf is used to lookup users in
NIS.

If you check your 11.XX system, you will see the following line in
nsswitch.conf:

passwd: files nis

In your /etc/passwd file there is no '+' sign. This absence means
that only nsswitch.conf is used for resolving your users in the NIS
database.

Both hpterm and xterm are older terminal emulators. They were not
adapted to only use nsswitch.conf to resolve user names and IDs.

I'm not certain they maybe fixed ... see hptermdiscontinuance in Rel Notes but the xterm should have worked see previous post ...

what was the syntax you gave it wrt -display :0.0

Does the addition to the /etc/passwd not work either ?

[Oliver Stoklossa]

I once had exactly the same problem ... I was using NIS without the +: in /etc/group and the +::-2:-2::: in /etc/passwd ...
Check your YP configuration

[Oliver Stoklossa]

Check this link ... Alex solved my problem then and I'm sure this time again ;)

http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0xc2d7d08cc06fd511abcd0090277a7>8c,00.htm

[Oliver Stoklossa]

Sorry ... not my day ... (I quit answering for today - I promise ;) )

The above link was wrong ... (never cut and paste more than 80 chars in a xterm just supporting 80 chars :) )

http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0xc2d7d08cc06fd511abcd0090277a778c,00.html

[Norman Lowe]

Thanks for your suggestions. We are using NIS+ rather than NIS, so I don't think the + in the password file is relevant. I did try it, but it didn't work.

The users are happy using dtterm for now, so I think I'll put this one on the back burner.