Hi. Traditionally, on Unix like systems, it is possible to run the 'w' and 'who' command to see all logged in users and ttys currently in used on the system. These commands look in /var/run/utmp to figure out what users are logged in, and depend on login managers (like login, gdm, etc) and terminal emulators to update the utmp file at the start and end of a session. In addition, the /var/log/wtmp file is used to record a history of sessions, accessable using the 'last' command.
I believe it is a requirement in Debian to keep the files utmp and wtmp up to date, and that any program should be able to depend on the content of these files. Example of packages depending on correct utmp information is sysvinit (the shutdown program broadcast a message to all logged in users), acpi-support-base (will lock the screen with the console user's password for hibernation) and killer (kill processes of users without active console sessions). But my view is not shared by everyone, as for example can be seen in <URL: http://bugs.debian.org/648604 >, where the maintainer of lightdm believe correctly updated utmp information is nice to have but not a requirement. It is not the first time I meet this view, so he is not the only one believing utmp and wtmp are not really no longer important pieces of a Unix like system. The debian policy manual have this to say about utmp and wtmp: 11.3 Using pseudo-ttys and modifying wtmp, utmp and lastlog Some programs need to create pseudo-ttys. This should be done using Unix98 ptys if the C library supports it. The resulting program must not be installed setuid root, unless that is required for other functionality. The files /var/run/utmp, /var/log/wtmp and /var/log/lastlog must be installed writable by group utmp. Programs which need to modify those files must be installed setgid utmp. But it do not state that programs should update it, nor when it should happen. Perhaps it should be extended to make that more clear? So my question to my fellow debian developers is simply this: Is correct updating of utmp and wtmp a requirement in debian, or just nice to have? Is it a wishlist bug to fix it, or a release critical problem? There are related mechanism like consolekit in place in Debian that can provide a list of currently logged in users, so the question is also if it is enough to only update consolekit, or if utmp must be updated too. -- Happy hacking Petter Reinholdtsen -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/2fl61wxqsgg....@diskless.uio.no