Bug 1183

Summary: sshd fails to update utmp
Product: Portable OpenSSH Reporter: Ollie Wild <aaw>
Component: sshdAssignee: Assigned to nobody <unassigned-bugs>
Status: CLOSED WORKSFORME    
Severity: normal CC: djm
Priority: P2    
Version: 4.3p2   
Hardware: ix86   
OS: Linux   

Description Ollie Wild 2006-04-21 03:57:24 AEST 
Periodically, my sshd stops updating utmp with login information.  Restarting sshd doesn't resolve the problem, but rebooting my computer does.  The last couple times this has happened, I've looked at the message log and seen lines like:

Apr 20 00:14:00 wild1 sshd[16387]: Invalid user admin from 82.165.184.132
Apr 20 00:14:01 wild1 sshd[16392]: Invalid user guest from 82.165.184.132
Apr 20 00:14:02 wild1 sshd[16397]: Invalid user master from 82.165.184.132
Apr 20 00:14:12 wild1 sshd[16402]: Did not receive identification string from 82.165.184.132

After the "Did not receive identification" line, my logins stop updating utmp, and I get errors like:

Apr 20 10:11:04 wild1 sshd[17729]: syslogin_perform_logout: logout() returned an error.
Comment 1 Damien Miller 2007-05-18 17:53:29 AEST 
This might be a glibc/libutil bug - the error message "syslogin_perform_logout: logout() returned an error" indicates that the libutil logout() call failed. Unfortunately this API provides nothing much in error reporting.

Can you strace a sshd that is failing and post the results? You might need to specify strace options to get it to follow fork() calls.
Comment 2 Ollie Wild 2007-06-09 15:54:49 AEST 
It's been over a year since I filed this bug.  Since then, I've gone through several system upgrades, and the problem no longer occurs.

Feel free to close this with whatever resolution is appropriate.
Comment 3 Damien Miller 2007-06-09 15:57:52 AEST 
Thanks for the update.
Comment 4 Damien Miller 2008-04-04 09:55:29 AEDT 
Close resolved bugs after release.