Re: who flags on OSR5

Brian K. White wrote:

From: "Jeff Hyman" <scolist@xxxxxxxxxx>

# uname -X
System = SCO_SV
Release = 3.2v5.0.6
KernelID = 2000-07-27
Machine = Xeon

Does anyone have any ideas why the 'who' command would fail to show a
logged in user with command:

# who -f

yet the command:

# who -x
shows the user.
User is logged in on a ttyp*

I have no idea what the -f is supposed to do, or why. I read the man page
but that still doesn't clarify anything.
(what is a superfluous, non remote, pseudo tty user? who -h adds
superfluous to what the man-page says)

I think `who -f` is supposed to omit users who have multiplied
themselves with mscreen(M).

On a box with about 220 users, all but 5 remote in terms of being not within
the netmask of any nic, only one non-remote in terms of tcp vs serial or
console, who -f shows exactly one line, and it's not even myself (ssh on
ttyp50) but a console session on tty01.
Checking a few other smaller boxes shows almost the same thing.
Sometimes my own ssh session shows up, sometimes nothing at all is retruned
even though 20 or so mixed lan & wan users are logged in.

The boxes in question have users all on ttyp*, using a mix of facetwin and
openssh.
Point being that it's no particular server login daemon doing something odd
(or failing to do something) in utmp that who fails to parse.

Nope, it's two particular server login daemons. The SCO-supplied sshd
should write the right flag into utmp, but I wouldn't be surprised if
that got lost in later builds. Nor would I be surprised if FacetWin's
login daemon missed it.

I just tried rlogin from a remote box (via vpn) in to the 220 user box and
who -f shows my own ttyp55 of the rlogin session and the previously noted
tty01.

Right, because the SCO-supplied rlogind and telnetd definitely write
that flag.

gwho (/usr/gnu/bin/who, if you have gnutools installed) does not appear to
have any analogous option.

Whatever it's supposed to do, I see no use for what it actually does.
I never used who -f but I do use who and who -ux and who -umx a lot.
who -umx is also part of a script I run in /etc/profile on all my boxes.

It omits ttyp records that don't have a "remote" flag. You've
apparently found at least two remote login daemons that don't write that
flag, so `who -f` is useless on your system.

It's probably essentially useless in modern times. So, easy solution,
don't use it. You'll note that `who -z` produces zero lines of useful
output (since it's an invalid flag) -- so don't use it. And don't use
"-f" which has an obsolete and no longer useful meaning (but doesn't
help you make the decision by returning an actualy error message).

Bela<
.

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