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

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Message #93 received at 73928 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu>
To: Arsen Arsenović <arsen <at> aarsen.me>
Cc: bug-gnulib <at> gnu.org, 1080330 <at> bugs.debian.org,
 Thorsten Kukuk <kukuk <at> suse.com>, Chris Hofstaedtler <zeha <at> debian.org>,
 Vincent Lefevre <vincent <at> vinc17.net>, Michael Stone <mstone <at> debian.org>,
 Bruno Haible <bruno <at> clisp.org>, 73928 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#73928: Bug#1080330: coreutils: who no longer works
Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2025 12:47:30 -0800

On 2/19/25 09:41, Arsen Arsenović wrote:
> they (gdm) are a user and they have a session.
> Adding additional filtration can only confuse admins who compare 'who'
> and other tools.

It is exactly that confusion that I'm trying to prevent.

The man page for "who" says "who - show who is logged on", but gdm is 
not logged on.

The POSIX spec for "who" says that "who" optionally reports the login 
time, but there is no login time here because nobody has logged in. The 
POSIX spec also says that "who -l" should list only lines where the 
system is waiting for someone to login - which is what's happening with 
the gdm display - and yet who with libsystemd doesn't do that.

It's a stretch to say that gdm is a "user" in the sense that most people 
understand "who". By default, "who" is supposed to list users who have 
logged in, not random UIDs like daemon or systemd-resolve or gdm that 
cannot log in.

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