[Tfug] Prolems with pts/*

[John Gruenenfelder]

On Mon, Feb 06, 2006 at 11:17:04PM +0000, Charles R Kiss wrote:
>I use who -u to find out who is logged in to what; then, I see in ps -e 
>(or "ps -ax" as a super user) and the pts/1 pid number doesn't show up 
>(for the charles pts/1  pid#14182).  Then, I try  to kill it anyway, and 
>"kill" says there is no such process!  What's going on??

I've found on my own systems that after a machine has been up for a while
"who" can become somewhat inaccurate.  I think it is caused when somebody's
remote session (ssh/telnet) dies and the login isn't properly cleaned up.

I almost always use "w" to see who is on.  I've never had it report phantom
users.

This is a little strange though, since the man pages for both programs state
they the input is /var/run/utmp so you'd think they would both present the
same info.  Perhaps "w" has some smarts which cause it to filter out people
who aren't really on.


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--John Gruenenfelder    Research Assistant, UMass Amherst student
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