Understanding the output of fwtmp Post: 302603676

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Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting Understanding the output of fwtmp Post 302603676 by methyl on Thursday 1st of March 2012 06:26:42 PM

03-01-2012

Registered User

Sorry, I don't have access to the utmpx.h file on your system. I certainly agree with your interpretation of the essential fields (including the record type field).

Anybody got the same Solaris 10 release handy who can answer the question in full?

I cannot comment properly on your circumvention because the bug depends on whether the computer identity is available or not. Therefore it may not be consistent in every record.
I'd be tempted to detect whether $12 contains an invalid day and move an "invalid" field to the end of the record (which would then conform to the "normal" layour of a fwtmp login/logout record where the client IP address or name is the last field and has variable length).

Were it not for this awful bug I would normally split the multi-year wtmpx file into manageable chunks (years or even year-months) and use "fwtmp" in reverse to create individual archive wtmpx files with names which include the year and whereby each of which can be processed in "last".
Once you have done this once you automate the archive switchover to suit your local login/logout rate and stop the multi-year wtmpx situation ever occurring again.

Last edited by methyl; 03-01-2012 at 07:46 PM.. Reason: try to remove ambiguity

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LEARN ABOUT POSIX

fwtmp

fwtmp(1M)						  System Administration Commands						 fwtmp(1M)

NAME

       fwtmp, wtmpfix - manipulate connect accounting records

SYNOPSIS

       /usr/lib/acct/fwtmp [-ic]

       /usr/lib/acct/wtmpfix [file...]

DESCRIPTION

       fwtmp  reads  from  the	standard input and writes to the standard output, converting binary records of the type found in /var/adm/wtmpx to
       formatted ASCII records.  The ASCII version is useful when it is necessary to edit  bad records.

       wtmpfix examines the standard input or named files in utmpx format, corrects the time/date stamps  to  make  the  entries  consistent,  and
       writes  to the standard output.	A hyphen (-) can be used in place of file to indicate the standard input. If time/date corrections are not
       performed, acctcon(1M) will fault when it encounters certain date-change records.

       Each time the date is set, a pair of date change records are written to /var/adm/wtmpx. The first record is the old  date  denoted  by  the
       string  "old time" placed in the line field and the flag OLD_TIME placed in the type field of the utmpx structure. The second record speci-
       fies the new date and is denoted by the string new time placed in the line field and the flag NEW_TIME placed in the  type  field.  wtmpfix
       uses these records to synchronize all time stamps in the file.

       In addition to correcting time/date stamps, wtmpfix will check the validity of the name field to ensure that it consists solely of alphanu-
       meric characters or spaces. If it encounters a name that is considered invalid, it will change the login name to INVALID and write a  diag-
       nostic to the standard error. In this way, wtmpfix reduces the chance that acctcon will fail when processing connect accounting records.

OPTIONS

       -ic	Denotes that input is in ASCII form, and output is to be written in binary form.

FILES

       /var/adm/wtmpx	       history of user access and administration information

ATTRIBUTES

       See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |      ATTRIBUTE TYPE	     |	    ATTRIBUTE VALUE	   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |Availability		     |SUNWaccu			   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+

SEE ALSO

       acctcom(1),  ed(1),  acct(1M),  acctcms(1M),  acctcon(1M),  acctmerg(1M),  acctprc(1M),	acctsh(1M),  runacct(1M),  acct(2), acct.h(3HEAD),
       utmpx(4), attributes(5)

       System Administration Guide: Basic Administration

SunOS 5.10							    22 Feb 1999 							 fwtmp(1M)