Re: bloated wtmp
On Tue 20 Jan 1998, Oliver Elphick wrote:
> My wtmp file was zeroed a week ago. Since then, last shows 86 logins, but
> the wtmp file is now 14Mb. It seems to be full of entries which are
> apparently of type UT_UNKNOWN, INIT_PROCESS and DEAD_PROCESS (if I
> am interpreting it right).
OffTopic: In cases like this I sorely miss the SysV "who -a" option,
that shows each entry, not just the logins. As there isn't any other
method of displaying the utmp/wtmp files short of "od", such an option
would be great.
> I also have a vboxgetty process that keeps on getting respawned. Are the
> two likely to be connected? Do getty processes write to wtmp?
The getty processes don't write directly to wtmp, but init does. As init
is doing the respawning, it write a wtmp record when starting the
process, and again when it finishes. This is normal behaviour.
> Here is a typical sample of wtmp, processed by `od -cx':
Unfortunately this is a chunk which doesn't span the begin and end wtmp
records. Anyway, It looks like the inittab entry I1 is doing the
respawning. The thing to look into now is why it's doing this
respawning. Vboxgetty shouldn't be dying this often (in fact, it should
never exit of its own accord!)
Paul Slootman
--
home: paul@wurtel.demon.nl | work: paul@murphy.nl
http://www.wurtel.demon.nl | Murphy Software, Enschede, the Netherlands
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