Diasappearing wtmp

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#230

From: Victor Wickerhauser
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1992 17:39

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We have approximately 5000 accounts in a 3-level NetInfo hierarchy.  We have
only a symbolic link .login file in each home directory, since the template
files installed by nu contain 42kb even after Mr. Jobs' letter is deleted
(=>210 MB for all our users).  The linked .login file copies the relevant
dotfiles upon the first login and then removes itself, exploiting the
assumption that many of the users will never log in.  Our system is new and
currently used by only a few consultants; its 5000 users do not know about it
yet.

One afternoon at 17:19 when I was running a background script to install
these links, remove the other dotfiles and recursively change ownership on
home directories, the WindowServer died with a message to /tmp/console.log.
At that point the chown script started complaining "user unknown" into its
logfile.  Also, mail to one of our 5000 users started bouncing, and another
user was unable to log into his account .  I noticed that /etc/wtmp did not
exist, so I created an empty one with `touch', after which the mail stopped
bouncing and the other user could log in.  I then rebooted the mailhost, for
the usual superstitious reasons.

It is natural to test wtmp with `last' if something suspicious happens, so
its disappearance becomes immediately obvious.  Be warned that there are
apparently some surprising side-effects.

Regards,
Victor

----
Prof. M. Victor Wickerhauser (314)935-6771  <victor@jezebel.wustl.edu>
Dept. of Mathematics, Washington University, St. Louis, MO  63130  USA

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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!darwin.sura.net!wupost!eclnews!jezebel!victor
From: victor@jezebel.wustl.edu (Victor Wickerhauser)
Subject: Diasappearing wtmp
Message-ID: <1992Jul25.173911.29664@wuecl.wustl.edu>
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Organization: Washington University, St. Louis Mo.
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1992 17:39:11 GMT
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