I have also had the same problem. I concluded it was a bug in 'who', since
'who /var/log/wtmp' would work when just 'who' would not. (by default, who
reads the file /var/run/utmp, btw.) In addition, 'w' did work at the same
time when 'who' did not. 'w' and 'who' appear to be from completely
different source on my computer.
A 'strace who' showed that 'who' died near the end of parsing the utmp file.
Replacing the utmp file by the utmp file from another computer made who
work correctly, (aside from the fact that it printed the output for a
different computer.)
I was planning to investigate the matter further, but after I logged out,
'who' stopped crashing. If someone can send me a copy of /var/run/utmp
that causes 'who' to crash, I would be happy to look into it.
I never observed a "memory exhausted" error, but I'm guessing it's a
red herring.
dave...
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