who/finger output - billions of pts

[MaD dUCK <madduck@madduck.net>]

hey all,
want to help me figure something out? i am a former redhat/suse person
finally having ascended to debian. there is something peculiar that i
noticed which i cannot explain with my (pretty good) linux knowledge.

so on either suse or debian, i use xdm to start windowmaker after login
and i have some 20 or so rxvt's created for my convenience at startup.

on the suse machine, the finger output with a local windowmaker
session and a remote ssh login looks as follows:

Login     Name       Tty      Idle  Login Time   Office     Office Phone
madduck   MaD dUCK  *:0             Feb 18 10:42 Robot Lab 1-610-328x8618
madduck   MaD dUCK   pts/2          Feb 20 12:48 (d136.sproul.swarthmore.edu)


on my debian system, finger looks as follows:

Login    Name               Tty      Idle  Login Time   Office Office Phone
madduck  MaD dUCK           :0             Feb 19 16:00 (console)
madduck  MaD dUCK           pts/0   19:16  Feb 19 16:01 (:0)
madduck  MaD dUCK           pts/2   19:15  Feb 19 16:02 (:0)
...

and a line for every terminal i opened on :0

why is this? what's different about wtmp/utmp (i presume) on
suse/redhat than on debian? i don't want finger to show 20+ logins of
my account when all i did was login once and opened xterms
otherwise...

any pointers?

thanks,
martin

[greetings from the heart of the sun]# echo madduck@!#:1:s@\@@@.net
-- 
"it usually takes more than three weeks
 to prepare a good impromptu speech.
                                                         -- mark twain