User-Related Problems

User Cannot Log In

• The user has the nologin or noattach flag set.

• The user has the onelogin flag set and is already logged in at another terminal or window.

• The user has reached the connect-time usage limit. The user needs to wait for the usage to decay before logging in again, or the administrator can change either the user's terminal.usage attribute or terminal.limit attribute to give the user additional terminal connect-time.

• The user's lnode may exist but it has been orphaned because its parent lnode has been removed. See Orphaned Lnodes.

None of the Solaris Resource Manager limitations listed above apply to the superuser.

Although the user is able to log in to the system, if there is no lnode corresponding to the UID of the user (an lnode has not been set up for that user's account), the problem is identified by a message indicating that: No limits information is available. Refer to Orphaned Lnodes.

User Not Informed of Reaching Limits

During normal operation of Solaris Resource Manager, a logged-in user receives notification messages whenever a limit is reached. Sometimes users miss seeing these communications and are unaware of the cause of any problems they are having, and the system will appear to behave mysteriously. However, the system administrator will have been notified.

The delivery of notification messages is carried out by the Solaris Resource Manager daemon program, limdaemon. There are a number of possibilities that the administrator can investigate if notification messages are not being delivered to users:

• The console window is hidden. If a user has logged in using a particular window and then opened additional windows that cover the login window, the user may miss a message delivered to the login window.

• The limdaemon program is not running.

• limdaemon is unable to dynamically allocate additional memory to maintain its internal structures. If this happens, limdaemon displays a diagnostic message on the system console the first time that it fails to get sufficient memory. It continues to attempt to get memory, but fails silently after the first attempt.

• The utmp file is corrupt or missing. limdaemon relies on this file to identify the terminals where a user is logged in, so notification messages can be sent to those terminals. If the utmp file is corrupted or missing, an error message is reported on the console, and the notification message delivery is suppressed.

• limdaemon is unable to deliver a message due to a system limitation. For example, if limdaemon needs to open a window on a terminal to deliver the message and is unable to, then the message is dropped.

Unable to Change User's Group

The sgroup attribute determines the lnode's parent in the scheduling tree. This hierarchy is used to regulate resource usage and to schedule the CPU. For this reason several security precautions are placed on modifying the sgroup attribute, both to avoid inadvertent errors when changing it and to prevent circumvention of Solaris Resource Manager.

To modify the sgroup attribute, a user needs one of the following privileges:

• Be the superuser

• Have a set uselimadm flag

• Have a set admin flag and be a group header for the lnode being changed

Orphaned lnodes cannot be made parents of other lnodes. See Orphaned Lnodes.

Users Frequently Exceeding Limits

Check whether any of these conditions are causing the problem:

• A user's administrative limit is set too low for the user's requirements.

• The usage attribute is not being decayed. The administrator is responsible for ensuring that decays are performed on the device categories for all renewable resources (including the terminal device category). Typically, this would be done by regular execution of the limdaemon command. If a decay is not performed for a renewable resource, the usage attribute for that resource continues to increase until its limit is reached.

• The decay period is too long. The frequency of execution of limdaemon should be set to accommodate the granularity of the shortest decay interval.

• The decay attribute for a renewable resource is too small, or the interval attribute is too large. If the decay for a renewable resource over a given time interval is set below the typical consumption rate of that resource, the usage attribute will gradually increase until its limit is reached.