Date: Wed, 14 Jul 1999 10:42:39 -0700 From: "Childers, Richard" <RCHILDER@hamquist.com> To: "'Anil Jangity '" <aj@entic.net>, "'freebsd-security@freebsd.org '" <freebsd-security@freebsd.org> Subject: RE: weird w report? Message-ID: <D57D3E9BF7C1D211884400805F77AC7DFE37E4@sf1-mail01>
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"I have a weird user logon."
<ahem>
I don't mean to sound like an old grouch, here, but trouble reports that are
not accompanied by simple ASCII cut-and-paste examples of the 'here's what I
do, here's what I see' variety are worth almost nothing.
If you (not you, Anil, but the second person, generic 'you') can't be
bothered to take this small effort to facilitate the efforts of others to
assist you, then how can you expect others to expend any effort to help you
resolve your problem ??
Here's an example:
When I run the command 'foo -bar blat' I get an error.
(That's where the usual description cuts off. The professional reporter of
system problems would continue:)
Here's what I see:
root@spam.vax.com # uname -s -r
FreeBSD 2.2.9-RELEASE (-:
root@spam.vax.com # which foo
/usr/bin/foo
root@spam.vax.com # file `which foo`
foo: FreeBSD/i386 compact demand-paged executable
root@spam.vax.com # foo
Usage: foo [-[abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz] file [file]
root@spam.vax.com # ls -l ./blat
-rw-r--r-- 1 root bin 123 Feb 29 04:01 ./blat
root@spam.vax.com # foo -bar ./blat
ERROR: No such file or directory '.'
We can take it one step further:
root@spam.vax.com # foo -bar ./blat ; echo $status
ERROR: No such file or directory '.'
4
Now, *there's* a diagnostic description ... the person(s) on the receiving
end now know your operating system version, the path to the executable, the
way you are using it, the type of file being run and the type of file the
utility is being run on, and, not just the error message, but the return
status of the command, as well.
This is important for the person reporting the problem, as well as the
person resolving the problem; because it is an opportunity to become a
better-informed customer, and because it is the first step to becoming
independent of those more knowledgeable than oneself, as one grows into the
role of being more knowledgeable, oneself, through experience ...
-- richard
-----Original Message-----
From: Anil Jangity
To: freebsd-security@freebsd.org
Sent: 7/13/99 11:31 PM
Subject: weird w report?
I have a weird user logon. Its there but at the same time its not there.
Commands such as w(1) and last(1) report that a user is logged in but
when I do ``ps auxU <user>'' I don't see anything running for that user.
Then, I did ``su -m <user>'' and then ``kill -9 -1'' and still no luck.
w(1) still reports as if the user is there. I have no zombies running.
My
question is why is it doing this and if so how can I get rid of it w/o
having to reboot?
Its not really a problem, but I am just wondering as to how to get rid
of
it if its possible.
Thanks
Anil Jangity
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