The who command

Mark McCulligh mmcculli at visualtech.ca
Fri Jun 30 14:01:24 UTC 2006


Allen, Jack wrote:

>See below. 
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: redhat-install-list-bounces at redhat.com
>[mailto:redhat-install-list-bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf Of Mark
>McCulligh
>Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 3:10 PM
>To: Getting started with Red Hat Linux
>Subject: Re: The who command
>
>Rick Stevens wrote:
>
>  
>
>>On Thu, 2006-06-29 at 13:55 -0400, Mark McCulligh wrote:
>> 
>>
>>    
>>
>>>Rick Stevens wrote:
>>>
>>>   
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>>>On Thu, 2006-06-29 at 11:55 -0400, Mark McCulligh wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>     
>>>>
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>>>Hi Group,
>>>>>
>>>>>When I log into my system and run the who command I get no users. If
>>>>>          
>>>>>
>I 
>  
>
>>>>>look at my uptime is says 0 users. Plus if I view the lastlog file
>>>>>          
>>>>>
>it 
>  
>
>>>>>looks like it is corrupt.  How I am fix this?
>>>>>  
>>>>>
>>>>>       
>>>>>
>>>>>          
>>>>>
>>>>"who" is based on what's in /var/log/utmp or /var/log/wtmp.  If one
>>>>        
>>>>
>of
>  
>
>>>>those files is not present, who can't report on users.  However,
>>>>/var/log/wtmp is MANDATORY on Linux and is created by init if it does
>>>>not exist.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>     
>>>>
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>I have tried using the root user. The wtmp file does exist but is 
>>>blank.  Any ideas?
>>>   
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>When you say "blank", what do you mean?  Remember that it's a binary
>>file, so "cat" or "vi" are liable to spit out garbage or nothing.
>>
>>Can you post an "ls -l" of it?  It should look something like this:
>>
>>[root at prophead ~]# ls -l /var/log/wtmp
>>-rw-rw-r--  1 root utmp 364416 Jun 27 15:42 /var/log/wtmp
>> 
>>
>>    
>>
>This is what I get:
>[root at calonweb001 log]# lis -l /var/log/wtmp
>-rw-rw-r--  1 root utmp 0 Jun  1 04:02 /var/log/wtmp
>
>There is also a wtmp.1 file that also size 0.
>
>Mark.
>
>============
>How much free space is there on the file system that has the utmp and
>wtmp files? Some system use to keep the utmp and wtmp file in /etc and
>later they were changed to symbolic links to other locations such as
>/var/log. So some commands may look in the /etc directory and some
>commands may look in /var/log. If the symbolic link has been deleted
>then the data may be in /etc and the who command is looking in /var/log
>for the files.
>
>  
>
I have lots of free space around 60GB.  I am using RedHat Enterprise ES 
4, but don't know if this OS using a symboliclink or not.  Is there some 
way to reset the wtmp file(like delete it).

Mark.

>Jack Allen
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Redhat-install-list mailing list
>Redhat-install-list at redhat.com
>https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-install-list
>To Unsubscribe Go To ABOVE URL or send a message to:
>redhat-install-list-request at redhat.com
>Subject: unsubscribe
>
>=============================================
>This email scanned by CanIt-PRO Spam/Virus
>
>
>
>  
>




More information about the Redhat-install-list mailing list