Subject: Re: bug#73928: Bug#1080330: coreutils: who no longer works

From: Chris Hofstaedtler <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2025 00:07:02 +0100

* Paul Eggert <[email-masked]> [250216 23:52]:
> At this point I confess I don't know what changes would be needed for GNU
> 'who'. I see a difference of opinion as to whether 'w' works. There seem to
> be multiple mechanisms in play (utmp, wtmp, wtmpdb, lastlog2, logind, maybe
> others?) and I don't know when to use which, or even how to use them except
> for the traditional utmp/wtmp files.
> 
> Perhaps whoever has changed the longstanding API (is that Thorsten Kukuk, or
> someone else? anyway I'll cc Thorsten) can chime in with a proposed patch to
> bleeding-edge GNU coreutils. This would probably mean a patch to Gnulib's
> readutmp module, which already is supposed to work with systemd's new utmp
> interfaces but I guess some people are reporting problems with it? (This is
> unclear.)
> 
> For what it's worth, I briefly looked at
> <https://build.opensuse.org/package/show/openSUSE%3AFactory/coreutils> and
> didn't see a patch there.  So perhaps the problem is already addressed in
> bleeding-edge Coreutils?

Looks like if Debian would build coreutils with --enable-systemd, it
would just work:

https://sources.debian.org/src/coreutils/9.5-1/lib/readutmp.c/?hl=678#L678

Chris