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From: todd@uhccux.UUCP (The Perplexed Wiz)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: wtmp problem
Message-ID: <469@uhccux.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 4-May-87 21:44:53 EDT
Article-I.D.: uhccux.469
Posted: Mon May  4 21:44:53 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 5-May-87 06:46:05 EDT
Organization: U. of Hawaii, Manoa (Honolulu)
Lines: 35
Keywords: garbage in /usr/adm/wtmp


Has anyone else had a problem with their /usr/adm/wtmp file like what
I have below?  The output is from a quick and dirty program I wrote
to look at utmp and wtmp files.  As you can see my wtmp file was
getting data ok and then it looks like some garbage got thrown into
it causing an extra field to be inserted between the last "good"
structure field and the next entry into wtmp.

ut_line	ut_host  ut_name	ut_time
-------	-------  -------	-------
 ttyD1             ralph	Fri Apr  3 09:26:20 1987
 ttyB4          cm407s17	Fri Apr  3 09:26:39 1987
 ttyB1                  	Fri Apr  3 09:26:59 1987
 ttyp1                  	Fri Apr  3 09:28:32 1987
 ttyp1   UHCC20     gary	Fri Apr  3 09:28:49 1987
 ttyp1                  	Fri Apr  3 09:30:15 1987	/* good */
    ^B^C                  	Fri Jan  5 02:07:28 1945	/* bad */
^Mt ttyp1                  	Sun Apr 30 21:30:08 1950
^Mt ttyD1                  	Tue Dec 17 18:56:32 2002
^Nt ttyD1                  	Sat Dec 31 20:41:04 2011
^Nt ttyB3                  	Sun Apr 30 10:52:16 2034

The "fix" was to simply do a 'cp /dev/null /usr/adm/wtmp'.  But I'd like
a way to prevent it from happening again.  The problem has happened
about five times in the past five months.

System specifics: VAX 8650 running Ultrix 1.2.

Thanks in advance....todd

-- 
Todd Ogasawara, U. of Hawaii Computing Center
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