GNU bug report logs - #73928
"who" should support wtmpdb

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Message #63 received at 73928 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Vincent Lefevre <vincent <at> vinc17.net>
To: Thorsten Kukuk <kukuk <at> suse.com>
Cc: 1080330 <at> bugs.debian.org, Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu>,
 Chris Hofstaedtler <zeha <at> debian.org>, 73928 <at> debbugs.gnu.org,
 Michael Stone <mstone <at> debian.org>
Subject: Re: bug#73928: Bug#1080330: coreutils: who no longer works
Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2025 10:25:20 +0100

On 2025-02-17 08:03:23 +0100, Thorsten Kukuk wrote:
> Some terminal applications (e.g. xterm, konsole, ...) create fake utmp
> entries for historic reasons: so that broadcast messages are shown in
> every single terminal. Which for people, who only work with graphical
> applications, but not terminals, is not from help, as they will never
> see them.

No, there may be other uses. For instance, "who -d" reports
information about dead terminal processes. Obviously, this is
not for broadcast messages (more for debugging purpose, IMHO).
However, for xterm at least, the output information is incorrect
(term & exit values are always 0).

"who -u" also reports useful information, such as the idle time
and the PID of the terminal process. The absence of utmp completely
breaks this feature.

-- 
Vincent Lefèvre <vincent <at> vinc17.net> - Web: <https://www.vinc17.net/>
100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: <https://www.vinc17.net/blog/>
Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / Pascaline project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)

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