[19471] in Athena Bugs
sun4 9.0.13: utmp errors on solaris/athena 9.0
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Angie Kelic)
Mon Jul 30 04:07:15 2001
Message-Id: <200107300807.EAA24849@tomcat.mit.edu>
To: bugs@MIT.EDU
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 04:07:13 -0400
From: Angie Kelic <sly@MIT.EDU>
System name: tomcat.mit.edu
Type and version: SPARC/5 9.0.13 (with mkserv)
Display type: cgsix
Shell: /bin/athena/tcsh
Window manager: fvwm2
What were you trying to do?
Read my log files
What's wrong:
My solaris machine has been printing this to its log files
once an hour since it took 9.0:
Jul 29 06:54:53 tomcat.mit.edu /usr/lib/utmpd[358]: [ID 268571 daemon.warning] WARNING: /var/adm/utmp exists!
Jul 29 06:54:53 tomcat.mit.edu See utmp(4) for more information
Reading the man page for utmp(4) says:
DESCRIPTION
The utmp and wtmp database files are obsolete and are no
longer present on the system. They have been superseded by
the extended database contained in the utmpx and wtmpx data-
base files. See utmpx(4).
It is possible for /var/adm/utmp to reappear on the system.
This would most likely occur if a third party application
that still uses utmp recreates the file if it finds it miss-
ing. This file should not be allowed to remain on the sys-
tem. The user should investigate to determine which applica-
tion is recreating this file.
What should have happened:
Interestingly enough the utmpd manpage still references the files
that are called "obsolete" in the utmp(4) man page --perhaps
this is because the utmpd man page is about a year older than
the utmp man page. In any case, if there's an athena program
(such as login?) writing out this file independently perhaps
it should be made to interoperate with utmpd. (I presume utmpd
needs to be running, but given that the sun docs are skewed,
this is unclear as well).
Please describe any relevant documentation references:
utmp(4), utmpd(1M), utmpx(4)
