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

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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: bug#73928: Bug#1080330: coreutils: who no longer works
Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2025 13:09:22 +0100

On 2025-02-17 10:39:09 +0100, Thorsten Kukuk wrote:
> "who -d" shows which login processes exit without removing the utmp
> entry and where the init process cleaned up the utmp entry instead.
> Since no terminal is controlled by an init process, you should never
> see any terminal listed. So I have my doubts that you ever saw there
> terminal processes. And if yes, something was terrible broken with
> your init and login process.

This is shown at least for xterm processes that have terminated
and for closed SSH sessions.

> > "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.
> 
> Yes, and this feature never worked reliably if I look at all the old
> bug reports for openSUSE.

It seems to be reliable for xterm and SSH sessions (not for GNU Screen
unfortunately).

> This "feature" is very terminal centric and stopped already working
> when people decided to use graphical applications and not terminals.

But the goal is to use this for terminals only.

-- 
Vincent Lefèvre <vincent <at> vinc17.net> - Web: <https://www.vinc17.net/>
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Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / Pascaline project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)

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