user with no logout

megalomania · 06-25-2003, 06:23 AM

Hi,

there's a ghost user still stuck on my system, and I can't seem to find a way to kill it. I don't want to reboot the machine.

finger gives:
$finger
Login Name Tty Idle Login Time Office Office Phone
root root tty1 18 Jun 25 13:10
samer Samer *pts/3 175d Jun 21 09:35 (samer)
....
..

and the last command shows the user samer (gone - no logout) , I tried emptying /var/log/wtmp, but it didn't affect finger

how can remove that ghost?

Thanx in advance.

stony · 06-25-2003, 06:46 AM

Hi,

check out the process list (ps aux) and look if the shell the user was/is running is a ghost shell (<defunct>) or summin else, then you can't kill the user without a reboot.

cu

rvilarl · 10-28-2003, 12:04 PM

Hi,

I had the same problem and solved it removing /var/run/utmp and creating a new one as root, that is:

cd /var/run
rm utmp
touch utmp
chgrp utmp utmp
chmod g+w utmp

after that, if you execute who, no user will be shown, but they will be updated on the next login.

Hope it helps...

masand · 04-12-2004, 04:58 AM

i think u can edit the files utmp to remove ur ghost users

lookout for

man getutent

nice program also given here