wtmp file corruption

[haynes at ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP]

We had this problem several years ago when we were trying to use
wtmp for accounting.  The cause is that if two people log in at
the same time there is no interlocking, so they both append to
wtmp and this in general screws it up.  This may be the problem you
are having.

Our solution was (sadly) to hack the init program to write the
wtmp information into a directory /usr/adm/stmps where there is one
stmp file per tty.  As long as two people can't log in at the same
time on the same tty this prevents the problem.

Jim Haynes
...ucbvax!ucscc!haynes
haynes at ucscc.bitnet
haynes at ucbarpa.berkeley.edu