That's usually because the UTMP file was messed up. There are no known bugs
in the current sysvinit versions ..
>It results that finger shows users that are no longer actually
>logged in, but it also results that e.g. if that users was logged
>in on tty1, that agetty will end up with D stat and wait_on_buff
>WCHAN in few hours. Since processes with D stat cannot be killed if you
>manually clean utmp everything will be restored to normal state. Is this
>kernel problem or sysvinit bug?
Processes hung in D state are sometimes due to a kernel bug, but can also be
caused by bad memory or a dying disk, or even bad SCSI cabling.
Mike.
--
... one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking
zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs.
-- Robert Firth
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