From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; de; rv:1.8.1.4) Gecko/20070515 Firefox/2.0.0.4 Description of problem: When I am logged in with gnome and the only terminals open are xterm I do not get the correct information about me being logged in with the command "who" nor "w". When I open one of the standard terminals"who" (or "w") prints out the correct information. I assume there is a problem with utmp. I have a little piece of code that reads the utmp with getutxent(). No USER_PROCESS is in the list if no standard terminal is open. When I open a terminal (not xterm) there is a USER_PROCESS in the list. When I close this terminal this entry changes to DEAD_PROCESS and will not disappear until the next reboot. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): coreutils-5.97-12.1.el5 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Login with gnome desktop. No terminal should open automatically. 2. Press Alt-F2 for a command line and enter xterm. 3. Launch who in the xterm. No output will appear. Possibility 2: 1. Login with kde desktop. No terminal should open automatically. 2. Press Alt-F2 for a command line and enter xterm. 3. Launch who in the xterm. No outpur will appear. 4. Open a konsole and launch who. No output will appear. Actual Results: No output from "who". From "w" just the head line: [uludwig@uranus ~]$ w 12:44:37 up 19:44, 1 user, load average: 0.06, 0.05, 0.00 USER TTY FROM LOGIN@ IDLE JCPU PCPU WHAT [uludwig@uranus ~]$ who [uludwig@uranus ~]$ Expected Results: Additional info: We use getutxent() to determine if a user logged in locally. Since Red Hat EL 5 this doesn't work anymore. We need this urgently!!
Created attachment 157359 [details] small programm to read and print utmp
Thanks for the report. However, it sounds like you're reporting that who DOES accurately report the contents of the utmp file. If not, please include the output who prints along with the corresponding utmp/wtmp file. Have you read about xterm's -ls option? Someone reported a similar mismatch between their expectations and who's behavior. Here's the reply, in case it helps: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnu.coreutils.bugs/10560/focus=10561
You are right. My report should be a different one. Sorry. More like: "No login information is written to utmp" If I login (gnome or kde or fvwm) this is not logged into utmp correctly. The corresponding entry appears if I open a gnome-terminal. But if I open a xterm no entry is made. Even if I launch xterm -ls there is no entry in the utmp file. I need to determine if a user is logged, who is logged in and if he is logged in to :0 or remotely. This used to work with previous versions of RH EL.
It sounds like your problem is about the xterm program.
It's a problem with xterm and utempter access permissions. The xterm binary needs setgid utempter to make utmp entries.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 222847 ***
This bug is marked as a duplicate of 222847, but I don't have permission to view that bug report, so I'm posting here. From past experience, logging into gnome should update utmp. That's where the problem is. It shouldn't require opening xterm or gnome-terminal. Also, of note, if I do 'strings /var/log/wtmp | grep <user>', I see the user listed. But 'strings /var/run/utmp | grep <user>', I don't see them listed.
Steve, please file a bug report against a gnome component, this bug and bug #222847 is for xterm.
I don't have permission to view 222847, this problem still exits on a fully updated RHEL5 client; setting group on the xterm-binary and making it sgid does not work (hey, I've even tried suid to root on the xterm binary without success - just like it used to be in the olden days:-) Since this bug has been closed, could someone with access to 222847 either open it for the rest of us or tell us what's going on? -Sigurd
The updated package should be in RHEL 5.1. You can make the binary setgid utempter with: chown root:utempter /usr/bin/xterm chmod 2755 /usr/bin/xterm
Thanks! :-)