Logging In

Home » CentOS » Logging In
CentOS 6 Comments

This is…. odd.

We’re seeing a *lot* of sshd[8400]: Timeout, client not responding. So I’m trying to find out whose client is having issues. Trying to figure that, after processes are gone, I tried looking in lastlog, which is where it gets odd. lastlog shows root coming in, and it shows a security account coming in… years ago.

I see one of our users logging in a goodly number of times… but lastlog doesn’t show him. I just logged in as myself, no password, using keys… and lastlog doesn’t show me, or my manager, or anyone else.

Does anyone have any idea why lastlog’s not recording *all* logins?

mark

6 thoughts on - Logging In

  • Also check that /var/log/wtmp is set up correctly

    [smooge@smoogen-laptop ~]$ ls -lZ /var/log/wtmp
    -rw-rw-r–. root utmp system_u:object_r:wtmp_t:s0 /var/log/wtmp
    [smooge@smoogen-laptop ~]$ ls -l /var/log/wtmp
    -rw-rw-r–. 1 root utmp 116352 2018-01-30 13:55 /var/log/wtmp

    Sometimes wtmp gets rotated at the beginning of the year so there is usually another file like
    /var/log/wtmp-20180117 or something.

  • Is it possible you are testing SSH availability from nagios, monit, or some other software that connects to the port 22 without logging in?


    Marcelo

    “¿No será acaso que esta vida moderna está teniendo más de moderna que de vida?” (Mafalda)

  • Marcelo Roccasalva wrote:
    Ok, I guess I wasn’t clear. First, selinux is in permissive mode. Second, I, my manager, and another user have all logged into the server. Yet lastlog | grep -v Never shows only root and the years-old security account. It doesn’t show any of us.

    mark

  • Interesting. lastlog was always my go-to. However, at least in C6, last gets it, while lastlog does not.

    How odd.

    mark

  • Did you check /var/log/secure ?

    last

    command not mentioning logged i9n users will raise very big red flag for me. I also would check for something benign, like full filesystem. And hard drive errors. But the very first thing I would do: check the integrity of your box – whichever host integrity tool you use…

    Good luck.

    Valeri