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SubjectTrouble with login
I don't know if I have the right list because I don't know who's supposed
to maintain login. Any redirection would be appreciated.

We noticed this problem a few months ago and thought it was ssh. Last
night, I learned what was really happening.

As far as I can tell, login isn't maintaining the utmp file properly for
remote logons (ie ttyp0, ttyp1 etc.) When a user logins in through ssh,
telnet, etc. the new record is created in the utmp file. When the user
logs off, the status of that login is set to DEAD_PROCESS and left in the
file. when the next user logs on using the same tty, a new record is once
again created; leaving the DEAD_PROCESS record still in utmp.

From what I can tell one of two things should be happening and isn't.

a) When the user logs off, the entire record should be removed after
setting it to DEAD_PROCESS
b) When a user logs on using the same tty, it should search for an
existing entry for the tty in the utmp file. That entry should then be
updated with the new information.

I would assume the latter would be more correct since the purpose of the
utmp file is to maintain a record of the current status of logged in
users. Local consoles do update properly. When a user logs off, its status
is changes from USER_PROCESS status to LOGIN_PROCESS.

My personal feeling is that the problem has something to do with the
glibc libraries. One of our servers is still running a libc based
distribution and it isn't exhibiting the problem. Thank you for your time.
-C

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Curtis Ireland - cireland@aurora.carleton.ca

Aurora Security Officer
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