Stale login entries in utmp/wtmp (even after user logs out)
 

Hello,

I observe stale entries in either the utmp or wtmp files (not sure which one) when user's login and log out of the system. Not sure when the entries are created but see a bunch of conflicting entries. Here is an example of what I am talking about:

> w
11:25:38 up 17 days, 8:34, 3 users, load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.00
USER TTY FROM LOGIN@ IDLE JCPU PCPU WHAT
user1 pts/0 internet4.- 11:13am 0.00s 0.04s 0.00s w
> who
user1 pts/0 May 19 11:13 (internet4...)
user2 pts/0 May 16 17:22 (:0.0)
user1 pts/2 May 15 23:02 (:0.0)

If you notice in the above output from the "who" command it appears like "user1" and "user2" are logged in using the same terminal! However, only one user "user1" was logged in at the time this dump was taken.

This issue is causing some problems (when using talk and other tty based programs) on the system. I am using RedHat 9.0 stock kernel (2.4.20-30.9) and the machine is upto data as far as I can tell. Anybody come across this problem and know how to fix it?

thanks

with regards
-DJ