Path: utzoo!utgpu!cunews!bnrgate!brtph3!brchh104!brchs1!bnr.ca!rice.edu!sun-spots-request
From: brendan@ai.mit.edu (Brendan Kehoe)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun
Subject: Re: File permissions under SunOS 4.1.1
Keywords: SunOS
Message-ID: <1905@brchh104.bnr.ca>
Date: 15 Mar 91 22:44:00 GMT
Sender: news@brchh104.bnr.ca
Organization: Sun-Spots
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Approved: Sun-Spots@rice.edu
X-Original-Date: Mon, 25 Feb 91 12:36:21 EST
X-Refs:  Original: v10n31
X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 54, message 1
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>/etc/utmp must be world writable since shelltool creates entries there.
>This is an acknowledged problem.

I've used two different fixes at different times for this .. as long as
you start a window that grabs the console (e.g. shelltool -C or cmdtool
-C) as the very first thing that comes up, the messages "Make sure you can
write to /etc/utmp!" get swallowed in there. The other option is to edit
/usr/lib/libsun*.s{o,a}.* [I forget which, two of them have it], and
replace the pathname /etc/utmp with /dev/null.  That'll make it shut up.

Note that with your windows not appearing in utmp, talk and a few other
things won't work.

But I think it's a fair tradeoff for someone being able to be on your
system without you knowing, don't you?

     Brendan Kehoe - Widener Sun Network Manager - brendan@cs.widener.edu
       On hiatus at brendan@albert.ai.mit.edu whilst our router is down.