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  • Bug#75250: ssh: syslogin_perform_logout: logout() returned an error

    From Paul Slootman@21:1/5 to All on Sat Jul 12 15:50:01 2025
    It seems that on a fresh trixie install, nothing creates /run/utmp
    anymore. Is that a bug or is utmp deprecated? who and who -b still seem
    to work, so not sure how who finds its information, and if this means
    utmp is not required anymore.

    According to Googel Gemini (sorry...):

    Yes, it is by design that /run/utmp is no longer provided in Debian
    Trixie.

    This change is primarily due to:

    Year 2038 Problem (Y2K38): The traditional utmp file format uses 32-bit
    timestamps, which are susceptible to the Year 2038 problem. After
    January 19, 2038, these timestamps will overflow, leading to incorrect
    date and time readings. Upstream developers for the utmp format have
    been unwilling to change it.
    

    Modern systemd Session Management: systemd (which Debian uses as its
    init system) has its own, more robust, and modern session management
    capabilities. Information about active sessions, login times, and other
    user accounting data is now primarily managed by systemd itself, often
    exposed via logind and its API.

    So maybe sshd should ignore any error connected to utmp, instead of
    throwing an error.


    Thanks,
    Paul

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  • From Chris Hofstaedtler@21:1/5 to Paul Slootman on Sat Jul 12 16:00:01 2025
    On Sat, Jul 12, 2025 at 03:26:57PM +0200, Paul Slootman wrote:
    It seems that on a fresh trixie install, nothing creates /run/utmp
    anymore. Is that a bug or is utmp deprecated?

    utmp is deprecated, indeed.

    Chris

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    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Chris Hofstaedtler@21:1/5 to Richard Lewis on Sat Jul 12 23:50:01 2025
    On Sat, Jul 12, 2025 at 03:17:15PM +0100, Richard Lewis wrote:
    The draft release-notes for trixie do have some information on this, https://www.debian.org/releases/trixie/release-notes/issues.en.html#things-to-be-aware-of-while-upgrading-to-releasename

    but it we dont mention who(1) at all - should we say it continues to work? (im not sure if it matters enough?)

    It seems wrong to me to list all things that just continue to work.

    https://manpages.debian.org/testing/coreutils/who.1.en.html stills refer
    to /var/run/utmp - not sure if that is just a documentation bug of if
    who is broken too ('who' doesnt return anything in a chroot for me)?

    In a chroot, who should (most of the time) not show anything,
    because there was never a login.

    Chris

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    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Paul Slootman@21:1/5 to Chris Hofstaedtler on Mon Jul 14 09:30:01 2025
    On Sat 12 Jul 2025, Chris Hofstaedtler wrote:
    On Sat, Jul 12, 2025 at 03:17:15PM +0100, Richard Lewis wrote:
    The draft release-notes for trixie do have some information on this, https://www.debian.org/releases/trixie/release-notes/issues.en.html#things-to-be-aware-of-while-upgrading-to-releasename

    but it we dont mention who(1) at all - should we say it continues to work? (im not sure if it matters enough?)

    It seems wrong to me to list all things that just continue to work.

    I agree.
    I mentioned that who(1) still worked, to indicate that apparently utmp
    is deprecated (I did miss the documentation on that). So sshd should not
    report an error if it fails to update utmp .


    Paul

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