User shows in 'who', but process does not exist.

[John Demeny]

User shows when the 'who' command is type, but cannot kill user because process does not exist. Short of rebooting, how can I get system to realize he is no longer logged in?

who -u -H | sort

NAME LINE TIME IDLE PID
berglugr pts/tf Mar 10 06:18 4:57 7376

kill -9 7376
kill: 7376: The specified process does not exist.

[Michael Schulte zur Sur]

Hi,

what do you see from
ps -ef | grep 7376
?

greetings,

Michael

[Sridhar Bhaskarla · Accepted solution]

Hi,

This is due to an incomplete entry in utmp file often caused by non-gracious termination of the sessions. I would try the following.

/usr/sbin/acct/fwtmp < /etc/utmp > /tmp/utmp.txt
vi /tmp/utmp.txt
Edit it and remove the bogus entry and save.
Convert it back to utmp binary file.
/usr/sbin/acct/fwtmp -ic < /tmp/utmp.txt > /tmp/utmp
Backup your /etc/utmp in case needed and replace with the modified one.
mv /tmp/utmp /etc

Try again.

-Sri

[James A. Donovan]

This usually means that the /etc/utmp file is corrupt. You rename the file and reboot. It should be rebuilt automatically.

[Michael Tully]

We used to have this problem every second day. The real answer is to make sure that you install patch PHNE_24829 and also make sure that you include the special instructions.