utmp not working - even after reboot

[Nishan Sandhar]

Last week, I found that the /etc/utmp file was corrupted. Tried the repair using the various scripts/procedures mentioned here in the forum, but it didn't work.

The machine was then rebooted this weekend, but the problem remains.

When trying to change the password command, it fails with:

$ passwd
Usage: passwd [ -F file ] [ name ]
$

In addition, the perl "getlogin" function (which utilizes the getlogin() in C/Unix) also fails.

The commonality is the /etc/utmp file.

Any ideas on what else to try?

[harry d brown jr]

What steps did you take to "repair" the file?

Are the permissions as such:
# ls -l /etc/utmp
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1200 Mar 4 09:21 /etc/utmp
#


Have you simply deleted the utmp file???

live free or die
harry

[S.K. Chan]

Have you got the latest telnetd patch ? Reason for me to ask this is that if you're running 11.0 for example, there is a patch (PHNE_24762 - telnetd) that is needed to resolve problem of telnetd writting incorrect record to utmp thus corrupting it.

[harry d brown jr]

As S.K. say's, make sure you are up to date on patches, and then get everyone to logoff the server, then remove the /etc/utmp file, and then let them login.

Question, is this a "trusted" system?

live free or die
harry

[Nishan Sandhar]

#ls -ald utmp*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4920 Mar 4 09:09 utmp
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 24920 Mar 4 09:09 utmpx
#

The permissions are as shown above.

When you telnet to the server, it works fine. The scenario it fails in is when REXEC is used to execute hpterm and display it to another server.

[Nishan Sandhar]

This is NOT a trusted system.

The password command works fine when logged in via telnet. But when logged in via rexec/x-windows, it fails.

Not sure that a telnet patch is going to help me here.

[harry d brown jr]

Nishan,

I just removed my /etc/utmp file and successfully started an xsession using exceed from you client to my server via rexec.

live free or die
harry

[Nishan Sandhar]

There is no problem STARTING any xwindows applications. Its just that once they're started, "who -m" doesn't show ANYTHING, and things that use the "getlogin ()" function don't work.

-nishan

[harry d brown jr]

Nishan,

If and when you can reboot your server, then remove the /etc/utmp file before the reboot, and everything will be fine after your system is back up.

live free or die
harry

[Nishan Sandhar]

Turned out that OWNER ship of the hpterm and xterm executables changed to "bin" somehow. Once changed back to "root", everything works. Now I'll have to track down why/when they changed.