I have a Linux 1.2.8 server at work that has developed this problem after
a power outage this week. The power was out for a prolonged period of time and
the UPS ran out of juice. When the machine came back up online, it produces the
error message "_setutent: Can't open utmp file: No such file or directory" when
you try to do a "w" or when you open an xterm in openwindows. The /var/adm/utmp
file is still there as is its symbolic link from /etc/utmp -> /var/adm/utmp. I
had one other machine do this once before, but I reinstalled Linux before I had
a chance to track down the problem. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Bill deWindt
Systems Administrator
Hampden-Sydney College in VA

: error message "_setutent: Can't open utmp file: No such file or directory" when

I think your problem is, that the utmp file drifted around again
and ended up in /var/run/utmp now.
Also  /var/adm does not exist anymore.  It moved to /var/log now.

The current symlink forest seems to look like:

/var/log/wtmp (file)
/var/run/utmp (file)

/etc/utmp -> /var/run/utmp
/etc/wtmp -> /var/run/wtmp

/usr/adm -> /var/adm
/var/adm -> /var/log
/var/log/utmp -> /var/run/utmp

All the symlinks should help older binaries to find their utmp.
Newer binaries should have compiled-in the new path as defined by utmp.h

I found the following note in libc-changelog:

Mon Mar  6 14:30:36 1995  Daniel Quinlan <quin...@best.com>

        * <paths.h> (_PATH_UTMP); changed from /var/adm/utmp to
          /var/run/utmp.
          (_PATH_WTMP): changed from /var/adm/wtmp to /var/log/wtmp.
          (_PATH_LASTLOG): changed from /var/adm/lastlog to
          /var/log/lastlog.

          The transition procedure is like this:

            1. If /var/log doesn't exist,

                cd /var; mv adm log; ln -s /var/log adm
                cd /var/log; mv utmp /var/run; ln -s /var/run/utmp .

            2. If /var/log exists,

                cd /var; mv adm/* log; rm -rf adm; ln -s /var/log adm
                cd /var/log; mv utmp /var/run; ln -s /var/run/utmp .

          You have to modify the rc scripts and re-symlink
          /etc/utmp and /etc/wtmp accordingly.

Regards, Dieter.
--
Dieter Stueken, Inst. f. Kernphysik, WWU-Muenster
        stue...@qgp.uni-muenster.de
        http://qgp.uni-muenster.de/~stueken