On Feb 25,  9:05am, i18rabbit@cwazy.co.uk (i18rabbit@cwazy.co.uk) wrote:
-- Subject: Re: bin/32903: utmp remains empty

|  it still hasn't been addressed as to why
|  group ownership of utmp files would matter.
|  getty/login run as root, and can write to
|  any file they want to.  sshd writes to
|  utmp properly - so this is further
|  evidence that it is not a ownership problem.

If you don't have pam turned on for ssh (usepam yes in sshd_config) then
the two programs use different mechanisms to write to the utmp file.

christos