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shadow login: 'No utmp entry ...' - what now?

shadow login: 'No utmp entry ...' - what now?

Post by R. Scott Baile » Thu, 06 Jun 1996 04:00:00



I had earlier reported problems with shadow-960129 on my system where it
was impossible to log in on the system console because of "missing utmp
entries"...  I have discovered a resolution to my problem.

I've filled up my var partition :-) with symlinks from /var/adm/utmp and
/var/log/utmp (and /etc/utmp) pointing to /var/run/utmp in an attempt to
satisfy all of the various levels of software packages I run that can't
agree on where this file is located.

I discovered, by accident, that /etc/rc.d/rc.S distributed in older
versions of Slackware (maybe newer, too, I don't know) deletes and
recreates /var/adm/utmp, thus destroying my link. Apparently, whatever
sets up utmp information for login was stuffing it in /var/adm/utmp and
then the shadow login was looking in /var/run/utmp and not finding it.

I never would have found this except that this "maintenance" in rc.S is
attempted *BEFORE* non-boot partitions are mounted, and I started getting
these error messages when I split /var off to a separate partition...

Cheers,

  Scott

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EDS / ESC - Detroit            313-556-6011 [8/346]

 
 
 
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1. shadow login: 'No utmp entry ...' - what now?

I have been trying to get shadow-960129 installed on my system running
Linux kernel 1.2.13 (aout), GCC 2.7.2 (elf), LIBC 5.3.12 (elf) & 4.7.5
(aout), and similarly related versions of the other tools.  When I put
the new /bin/login into place, telnet logins work fine. But login attempts on
the system console work (sic) like this:

CENSORED login: CENSORED
No utmp entry. You must exec "login" from the lowest level "sh"

and the login prompt reappears. Strangely unsatisfying, yet secure. :-)

In the way of additional information, I'm using agetty, bash, and init from
the caveman version of Slackware I installed a few months back when 1.2.8 was
the greatest thing going, and utmp is located in /var/log/utmp with links to
it from /var/adm/utmp and /etc/utmp and /usr/adm/utmp. I've gotten identical
behavior from a system running kernel 1.99.7 with sysvinit 2.60 (but still
with old bash and agetty).

Does anybody understand this and know what needs to be done to fix this?

Please copy me by e-mail if you post a response; I don't want to miss a note
amidst the volume of other traffic here.

Thanks in advance,

  Scott

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EDS / ESC - Detroit            313-556-6011 [8/346]

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