On Thu, 7 May 2026 at 12:17, Vincent Lefevre <[email protected]> wrote:
> Note: I don't know whether this is an upstream bug or this is specific > to the Debian package, as Debian has a number of patches for "w", some > of them for the addition of the -t (--terminal) option, though they > come from the upstream repository (but there might be a divergence). > I'd be curious about that myself. 4.0.4-9 does have the upstream 4.0.6 w -t patches, so it should be the same. I use Gnome terminal myself, so it works fine for me. The way terminal mode works is that it scans all processes and sorts by tty and PID. So something like "ps -e -o tty,start,comm --sort=tty,pid" look for the tty column to change, that process start time is the login time. eg snipped ps output [...] pts/0 May 06 bash <-- this [...] pts/1 20:46:26 bash <-- this pts/2 20:57:50 bash <-- this pts/2 21:03:03 vi tty2 May 06 gdm-wayland-ses <-- this tty2 May 06 gnome-session-b $ w -t 21:12:04 up 1 day, 13:21, 1 user, load average: 0.25, 0.26, 0.22 USER TTY FROM LOGIN@ IDLE JCPU PCPU WHAT csmall tty2 - Wed07 37:21m 0.00s ? /usr/libexec/gdm-wayland-session /usr/bin/gnome-session csmall pts/0 - Wed13 4.00s 0.06s 0.06s w -t csmall pts/1 - 20:46 25:39 0.01s 0.01s bash csmall pts/2 - 20:57 4:15 0.56s 0.01s vi src/w.c This method is used if there is no systemd session, as you've noticed there isn't one for the terminal. That is actually the reason for -t mode otherwise "normal" w would work. So... why is the tty switch trick not working for your terminals? - Craig
