Who returns unreal idle time

[Tommy Brown]

When I query the system with who or finger or w, the system (10.20) returns an unrealistic idle time. The user may login at 8:00 am and at 11:00 I query with a who or w and it responds with OLD or a high value for the idle time sometimes 3d for a user who logged in at 8:00. The system is patched up through the latest tested patch bundle. Any ideas.

[Richard Darling]

possibly a corrupt /var/adm/wtmp file. I would create a new empty wtmp file and see if it happens again...

RD

[Patrick Wallek]

I get some of the same information when I run 'w' on my system. What it appears to me is happening is that 'w' is displaying just the time that the user logged in and not the day. I have users that have lots of idle time and I know for a fact that they have been logged in for several days, some have probably been logged in for a month or more, yet it still just shows the time.

[Paula J Frazer-Campbell]

Hi
Clear the wtmp file with :-

cat /dev/nul >/var/adm/wtmp

And then monitor.

HTH

Paula

[Shannon Petry]

Another thought (added to Paula's response) is to enable the standard berkley accounting package. If you run accounting daily and monthly as described in the man pages the wtmp file is cleared every day.
It is also a pretty nice tracking tool. While I dont look at everything very often, it is nice to have the info on hand if you are interested and have time to look.

Regards,
Shannon