The following reply was made to PR bin/32903; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: i18rabbit@cwazy.co.uk
To: gnats-bugs@netbsd.org
Cc: 
Subject: Re: bin/32903: utmp remains empty
Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2006 10:34:10 GMT

 >  >  well - i never had a group "utmp" in the 2 series,
 >  >  and it worked fine; and "login" is running with
 >  >  root privileges, so i don't see how the group
 >  >  makes a difference.  i did add a group "utmp"
 >  >  as per the installation /etc directory, and
 >  >  modified the group name of the utmp* files,
 >  >  and nothing has changed - it made no difference.
 >  >  still, no utmp entries were made by login.
 > 
 >  Sounds like your install is pretty messed up, including your NetBSD 2.x
 >  install. Here's the /etc/group file from NetBSD 2.0; note that it has a
 >  utmp group:
 >  http://cvsweb.netbsd.org/bsdweb.cgi/src/etc/group?rev=1.14&content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup
 > 
 >  NetBSD has had a utmp group going back to version 1.0, back in 1994:
 >  http://cvsweb.netbsd.org/bsdweb.cgi/src/etc/group?rev=1.4&content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup
 > 
 >  Perhaps you should use check the owner, group, and permission of all the
 >  base NetBSD files... or at least find out why 1) you didn't have a "utmp"
 >  group and 2) why your utmp file had the wrong group and permissions.
 >  utmp entries definitely do get created on a properly-installed NetBSD
 >  system.
 
 login(1) is run with root privileges.
 if it wants to write to a file, it can
 do so.  the problem is that it is not
 writing to the utmp file as it should.
 it would seem to me the problem is with
 the login source code - maybe it wasn't
 compiled with a "UTMP" preprocessor
 variable defined or something.  i don't
 see how it has anything to do with groups
 or permissions - this solution seems like
 a wild goose chase. ?