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From: izumi@violet.berkeley.edu (Izumi Ohzawa)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: A small bug in Communicae...
Message-ID: <1990Jan18.093351.1159@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: 18 Jan 90 09:33:51 GMT
References: <7711@sdcsvax.UCSD.Edu>
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In article <7711@sdcsvax.UCSD.Edu> rfellman@ucsd.edu (Ronald D. Fellman) writes:
>I was wondering whether anyone else has noticed a bug I found in
>Communicae and if there were any fixes for it.  Apparently, when
>Communicae launches, no entry is made in /tmp/utmp.  This means that 'w',
>'finger', 'who' and 'remind' don't work properly.  No one would know
>whether I am logged on. 'Remind' had to be modified and re-compiled in
>order to work.  
>
NeXT's Terminal and Shell need the 'setuid' bit set to update
the /etc/utmp file.  Perhaps, if you set it, it might work.

w, finger, who etc on NeXT are nearly unsuable because files
these programs use aren't maintained consistently.
Termial and Shell enter an entry into /etc/utmp, but they do
not clear the entry when the user logs out from Workspace
without first quitting these programs.

If 'setuid' fixes entering record, I certainly hope that
Communicae also removes entry when terminate message is sent
from Workspace to it.

By the way, the MOTD program by Christopher Lane fixes some of
these problems by maintaining /usr/adm/wtmp and /usr/adm/lastlog
files.  With this, at least the 'console' entry of 'w', 'finger'
will show correct infomation EVEN IF the user does not
launch any of terminal emulator programs.

MOTD is available at cs.orst.edu archive.  Other sites may
have the latest edition by now.

Izumi Ohzawa
izumi@violet.berkeley.edu