No UTMPX entry, You must EXEC "login" for the lowest "shell"

This error can be caused by either the file system containing /var is full preventing login information being written to utmpx or that the /var/adm/utmpx file itself is corrupt.

Correcting a corrupt utmpx

If utmpx is corrupt we can run the wtmpfix utility as root (superuser) to fix bad records in /var/adm/utmpx. For example:

# cd /var/adm
# /usr/lib/acct/wtmpfix < utmpx > utmpx.fix
# chown root:bin utmpx.fix
# chmpd 0644 utmpx.fix
# mv utmpx.fix utmpx

Correcting after file system full

If the error during login is due to file system full Then we can use the following steps to resolve:

  • Confirm the file system containing /var has enough space.
  • Stop the utmpd service
    # /etc/init.d/utmpd stop
  • Clear (do not delete) utmp and utmpx files
    # cat /dev/null > /var/adm/utmp
    # cat /dev/null > /var/adm/utmpx
    The above commands zero-out the files but keep them with the correct permissions.
  • Restart the utmpd service
    # /etc/init.d/utmpd start