arcege@golem.usmsas.maine.edu (Michael P. Reilly) (10/23/90)
To answer your question: When a user successfully logs into a host, the resulting shell is associated with a control terminal. That terminal is the index into the /etc/utmp file. Login then writes (or overwrites) the information about the new session at that record in the utmp file. Since two shells (with two different owners) exist, the system doesn't remove the entry when the new session terminates (reason: init(8) is not the parent process of the session therefore it doesn't get signaled and the utmp entry doesn't get removed). I hope this helps. Michael P. Reilly Referances: login(8), getut(3C:SYSV), utmp(5), init(8), "UNIX Administration Guide For System V" (Thomas&Farrow), pp.301-303. +=======================================+=====================================+ |Michael Reilly | Inter: arcege@golem.usmsas.maine.edu| |Unix Systems Admin/Analyst | UUCP: uunet!usm3b2!toaster!arcege | |Computer Science Dept. | BITNet: arcege@portland.bitnet | |University of Southern Maine | ip60401@portland.bitnet | |96 Falmouth Street, Portland, ME 04103 | BellNet: (207) 780-4515 | +---------------------------------------+-------------------------------------+