On Fri, Feb 13, 2026 at 03:34:36AM -0500, Thomas Dickey wrote: > On Fri, Feb 13, 2026 at 04:12:00AM +0100, Vincent Lefevre wrote: > > On 2026-02-12 16:37:28 -0500, Thomas Dickey wrote: > > > I reassigned this to libutempter0, and started by a merge request in case > > > the most recent developer would prefer that route: > > > > > > https://salsa.debian.org/cgzones/libutempter/-/merge_requests/2 > > > > But does this make "wall" output the message to xterm? > > In a quick check, it does. > > Running xterm (on my system which is repaired), and typing "wall" gets > a message in xterm. I see the same if I have two xterms.
However, _this_ bug reports an issue with the manpage.
The manpage says
FILES
The actual pathnames given may differ on your system.
...
/var/run/utmp
the system log file, which records user logins.
/var/log/wtmp
the system log file, which records user logins and logouts.
Upstream (me) doesn't need a change, but the Debian package (with the
proposed repair) could have a patch which removes the comment about wtmp,
because it's no longer useful to anyone. The comment about utmp can stay
because it's a symbolic link to /run/utmp. xterm's manpage doesn't
mention the "wall" command. The wall command's manpage doesn't go into
any detail on how it obtains the information, but refers to logged in users.
--
Thomas E. Dickey <[email protected]>
https://invisible-island.net
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