On bookworm who (GNU coreutils 9.1) operates more or less as I have
expected it to operate for several decades: it prints current logins.
E.g.:

charles@hawk:~$ who
charles tty7 2025-03-30 11:31 (:0)
charles pts/35 2025-03-27 20:13 (192.168.100.47)
root pts/36 2025-03-27 21:48 (192.168.100.47)
charles@hawk:~$

On trixie who (GNU coreutils 9.5) gives me a long list of logins, most
of which predate the most recent reboot. "who -u", similarly.

How do I get only the current logins?

Also, who on bookworm works fine with no arguments. who on bookworm
requires the file to use in order to get any useful output at all,
e.g.: "who -Hu /var/log/wtmp". This might be a bug.

Finally, I see that bug #798910, "coreutils: /usr/bin/who --lookup does
not look up ip addresses in dns", is still outstanding and a bit
annoying. https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=798910

Thank you.

--
Does anybody read signatures any more?

https://charlescurley.com
https://charlescurley.com/blog/

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On Sun, 30 Mar 2025 18:53:39 -0400
Timothy M Butterworth <[email protected]> wrote:

On trixie who (GNU coreutils 9.5) gives me a long list of logins,
most of which predate the most recent reboot. "who -u", similarly.

On my Trixie system `who --users` only provides a carriage return and
prints no information. 'who -a' only prints the last boot time. Seems
like who is seriously broken.

Did you provide a file for who, as I noted lwer down in my original
email? E.g.:

who /var/log/wtmp



--
Does anybody read signatures any more?

https://charlescurley.com
https://charlescurley.com/blog/

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Mike Castle <[email protected]> writes:

The whole utmp stuff is flaky, a best effort system that might give
some resemblance to reality.

I believe /run/utmp is gone in trixie, after systemd was upgraded to
256.5-2. The command `w` still works fine.

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1080330

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 3/30/25 18:25, Charles Curley wrote:

On bookworm who (GNU coreutils 9.1) operates more or less as I have
expected it to operate for several decades: it prints current logins.
E.g.:

charles@hawk:~$ who
charles tty7 2025-03-30 11:31 (:0)
charles pts/35 2025-03-27 20:13 (192.168.100.47)
root pts/36 2025-03-27 21:48 (192.168.100.47)
charles@hawk:~$

On trixie who (GNU coreutils 9.5) gives me a long list of logins, most
of which predate the most recent reboot. "who -u", similarly.

who version 9.4 on armbian does not suffer from either of these
problems. 9.1 on bookworm would seem to be a bit elderly.

However 9.1 on an rpi4 running bookworm in aarch64  works well.

Some of my cnc machines are still on wheezy, where version 8.3 also
works properly. You and I have 9.1 which acts as you say.

How do I get only the current logins?

Also, who on bookworm works fine with no arguments. who on bookworm
requires the file to use in order to get any useful output at all,
e.g.: "who -Hu /var/log/wtmp". This might be a bug.

That gives the history since the last install, but does not do the src
address lookup, so IMO its not a perms problem.

Finally, I see that bug #798910, "coreutils: /usr/bin/who --lookup does
not look up ip addresses in dns", is still outstanding and a bit
annoying. https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=798910

Thank you.

Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
- Louis D. Brandeis

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 3/31/25 02:09, Henrik Ahlgren wrote:

Mike Castle <[email protected]> writes:

The whole utmp stuff is flaky, a best effort system that might give
some resemblance to reality.

I believe /run/utmp is gone in trixie, after systemd was upgraded to
256.5-2. The command `w` still works fine.

no, its dns lookup fails there also.  Bottom line: who, or its ytmp
helpers, is incapable of reading the /etc/hosts file on systems w/o a
dhcpd.

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1080330

.

Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
- Louis D. Brandeis

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 3/31/25 03:36, gene heskett wrote:

On 3/31/25 02:09, Henrik Ahlgren wrote:

Mike Castle <[email protected]> writes:

The whole utmp stuff is flaky, a best effort system that might give
some resemblance to reality.

I believe /run/utmp is gone in trixie, after systemd was upgraded to
256.5-2. The command `w` still works fine.

no, its dns lookup fails there also.  Bottom line: who, or its ytmp
helpers, is incapable of reading the /etc/hosts file on systems w/o a
dhcpd.

correction ytmp s/b utmp

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1080330

.

Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.

Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
- Louis D. Brandeis

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Hi,

On Mon, Mar 31, 2025 at 03:36:20AM -0400, gene heskett wrote:

On 3/31/25 02:09, Henrik Ahlgren wrote:

I believe /run/utmp is gone in trixie, after systemd was upgraded to 256.5-2. The command `w` still works fine.

no, its dns lookup fails there also.

This conversation is about the "who" command's inability to show who is currently logged in, not the second thing mentioned which was it not
doing DNS lookups.

The utmp database had to change because it was not year 2038 safe. who
just hasn't been updated yet. The bugs and complaints for that need to
go upstream, as much as anyone can complain over free software.

Here is the bug report you quoted but did not read:

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1080330

Bottom line: who, or its ytmp helpers,
is incapable of reading the /etc/hosts file on systems w/o a dhcpd.

This is not how processes on Linux do DNS lookups. Virtually nothing is "capable of reading the /etc/hosts file" because that's not how any of
this works.

Thanks,
Andy

--
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 3/31/25 05:10, Andy Smith wrote:

Hi,

On Mon, Mar 31, 2025 at 03:36:20AM -0400, gene heskett wrote:

On 3/31/25 02:09, Henrik Ahlgren wrote:

I believe /run/utmp is gone in trixie, after systemd was upgraded to
256.5-2. The command `w` still works fine.

no, its dns lookup fails there also.

This conversation is about the "who" command's inability to show who is currently logged in, not the second thing mentioned which was it not
doing DNS lookups.

The utmp database had to change because it was not year 2038 safe. who
just hasn't been updated yet. The bugs and complaints for that need to
go upstream, as much as anyone can complain over free software.

Here is the bug report you quoted but did not read:

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1080330

I've read it now, but I'm disappointed at how this has been treated. Pot called the kettle black and vice versa with zero progress as bookworm is stuck on 9.1 while the rest of the planet has moved on to at least 9.4 which works.

Tbird, beta, still has broken quoting.

The dns problem is separate I guess, but does bring up my other pet
peeve. That is that no one at debian considers the effect on dns to
those of us who have been using hosts files for local dns since back in
the late 90's  I have no  dhcpd setup and rig my lashup so that my local lookups are first and in the hosts file, if not it the hosts, my isp's
dns gets queried. But every new install changes things around
resolv.conf making that harder and harder to do.

What makes the debian people treat hosts file users, like 3rd class
users?   Its  easier to setup, needs less maintenance, and Just Works
since my first linux install in '98...  Sure, we can lock NM from
tearing a working net down by making resolv.conf immutable and a real
file. We no longer have to do that with bookworm but from wheezy to
bookworm we did have to protect resolv.conf from NM.  But every time we mention it, we catch it by giving us what for w/o telling us how to make
it work. That too gets old. Why?

 Bottom line: who, or its ytmp helpers,
is incapable of reading the /etc/hosts file on systems w/o a dhcpd.

This is not how processes on Linux do DNS lookups. Virtually nothing is "capable of reading the /etc/hosts file" because that's not how any of
this works.

Sorry to disappoint you but that seems to be working Just Fine, but once
again, you make no attempt to either explain why its wrong, or to tell
us what the right way is other than demanding we waste a week making
dhcpd actually work.

Thanks,
Andy

Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
- Louis D. Brandeis

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Mon, Mar 31, 2025 at 11:19:30AM -0400, gene heskett wrote:

[...]

The dns problem is separate I guess, but does bring up my other pet peeve. That is that no one at debian considers the effect on dns to those of us who have been using hosts files for local dns since back in the late 90's  I have no  dhcpd setup and rig my lashup so that my local lookups are first and in the hosts file, if not it the hosts, my isp's dns gets queried. But every new install changes things around resolv.conf making that harder and harder to do.

Gene. I really don't know what you are doing. I do use my hosts file
all the time (last time was Thursday last week). I use it when testing
out some web site, whose test version is running in the local net (say 192.168.42.13) but which thinks it's "www.foo.com". I just put that entry
in the /etc/hosts, and things Just Work. I *need* that for my devel
work.

The only offender I have to be aware of is the browser, which sometimes
would like to do DoH (which we have explained already in another thread,
so I won't repeat).

What makes the debian people treat hosts file users, like 3rd class users?  

I'm a (heavy!) hosts file user. I'm being treated by Debian 1st class.
Perhaps it's Raspbian? I don't know.

You must have a very strange setup indeed.

Cheers
--
t

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--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On Mon, Mar 31, 2025 at 19:38:16 +0200, [email protected] wrote:

On Mon, Mar 31, 2025 at 11:19:30AM -0400, gene heskett wrote:

What makes the debian people treat hosts file users, like 3rd class users?��

I'm a (heavy!) hosts file user. I'm being treated by Debian 1st class. Perhaps it's Raspbian? I don't know.

You must have a very strange setup indeed.

This is one of Gene's persistent confusions. No matter how many times
we tell him how to configure networking correctly (which includes the
use of an /etc/hosts file), he keeps coming back and saying it doesn't
work for him.

It works for everyone else, and we've given *thoroughly detailed*
step-by-step instructions on how to do everything correctly.

Multiple times.

Anyway, that's totally irrelevant in this thread, which is currently
about the transition from wtmp to wtmpdb (or at least, that's my
understanding of the situation) in Trixie.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 3/31/25 13:38, [email protected] wrote:

On Mon, Mar 31, 2025 at 11:19:30AM -0400, gene heskett wrote:

[...]

The dns problem is separate I guess, but does bring up my other pet peeve. >> That is that no one at debian considers the effect on dns to those of us who >> have been using hosts files for local dns since back in the late 90's  I
have no  dhcpd setup and rig my lashup so that my local lookups are first >> and in the hosts file, if not it the hosts, my isp's dns gets queried. But >> every new install changes things around resolv.conf making that harder and >> harder to do.

Gene. I really don't know what you are doing. I do use my hosts file
all the time (last time was Thursday last week). I use it when testing
out some web site, whose test version is running in the local net (say 192.168.42.13) but which thinks it's "www.foo.com". I just put that entry
in the /etc/hosts, and things Just Work. I *need* that for my devel
work.

my whole local 192.168.yy.zz local net runs that way, which is how it
should but its been a trip making it work since wheezy went away. Most
of my linuxcnc machines are still on wheezy. But I'm hidden behind a
later model router running the latest dd-wrt. Every machine (currently
9) can browse the planet with FF the way I'm setup. Do their own updates
etc.

The only offender I have to be aware of is the browser, which sometimes
would like to do DoH (which we have explained already in another thread,
so I won't repeat).

What makes the debian people treat hosts file users, like 3rd class users?

I'm a (heavy!) hosts file user. I'm being treated by Debian 1st class. Perhaps it's Raspbian? I don't know.

The rpi4 running my Sheldon lathe claims its debian 12. The printers I
have built are all armbian. So nothing from the foundation is running
anyplace here. There is nothing about Raspian in the same county as
realtime although I did develop a way to put a realtime kernel in
raspian several years back. Amazingly the tarball is just over 28 megs,
all I have to do is point grub at it. Based on 4.19, latency is 1/4th
the realtime debian has in its current 6.10 something RT. 12 microeconds
vs 50+.

The lathe doesn't seem to care.

You must have a very strange setup indeed.

I blame it on the busted bookworm installer. Anything plugged into usb
triggers it to put orca and brltty in whether you want it or not.  I
don't own a wired mouse. I did close to 40 installs trying to find a way
around that but probably 30 of he reinstalls were because it would not
reboot once I'd shut orca up. Couldn't remove it because of dependencies
until an update finally fixed the dependencies but now I'm stuck with a
30 second to a full minute system freeze while trying to create or open
a file in my /home/me path. That's very distracting, fouls up ones train
of thought waiting and waiting for the file requestor to open. Once it
does open, freezeup is finished, but it sure wastes a lot of time. Mouse pointer moves but buttons and keyboard are dead.

Cheers

Thanks Tomas. Take care of #1.

Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.

--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
- Louis D. Brandeis

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Hello,

On Mon, Mar 31, 2025 at 11:19:30AM -0400, gene heskett wrote:

On 3/31/25 05:10, Andy Smith wrote:

Here is the bug report you quoted but did not read:

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1080330

I've read it now, but I'm disappointed at how this has been treated. Pot called the kettle black and vice versa with zero progress as bookworm is stuck on 9.1 while the rest of the planet has moved on to at least 9.4 which works.

The subject of this thread is coreutils in the forthcoming trixie
release, where "who" is not particularly functional as discussed.

I have no idea what tangent you are going off on now, and the rest of
your off-topic and self-inflicted issues with hosts files will not be
tackled (again) by me. All I will say for the archives is that as
usual the complaints are entirely without merit.

Regards,
Andy

--
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 3/31/25 15:24, gene heskett wrote:

I blame it on the busted bookworm installer. Anything plugged into usb triggers it to put orca and brltty in whether you want it or not.  I
don't own a wired mouse. I did close to 40 installs trying to find a
way around that but probably 30 of he reinstalls were because it would
not reboot once I'd shut orca up. Couldn't remove it because of
dependencies until an update finally fixed the dependencies but now
I'm stuck with a 30 second to a full minute system freeze while trying
to create or open a file in my /home/me path. That's very distracting,
fouls up ones train of thought waiting and waiting for the file
requestor to open. Once it does open, freezeup is finished, but it
sure wastes a lot of time. Mouse pointer moves but buttons and
keyboard are dead.

I've personally had two different situations where my PC behaved that slow:

1: I had my network config mangled (dns not resolving or a mounted share
folder lost connection with the server)

2: my hard disk/ssd was so wore it took it that long to read/write files...

If neither is your problem then I can't think what next.


I've had where brltty would grab any USB serial converter I plugged in,
then I couldn't use them for their intended purpose. Since I don't use
brltty I uninstalled it, fixing that problem.

Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.

--
Thank You!

Titus Newswanger
Curtiss WI

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Mon, Mar 31, 2025 at 08:58:26PM +0000, Andy Smith wrote:

On Mon, Mar 31, 2025 at 11:19:30AM -0400, gene heskett wrote:

On 3/31/25 05:10, Andy Smith wrote:

Here is the bug report you quoted but did not read:

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1080330

I've read it now, but I'm disappointed at how this has been
treated. Pot called the kettle black and vice versa with zero
progress as bookworm is stuck on 9.1 while the rest of the planet
has moved on to at least 9.4 which works.

The subject of this thread is coreutils in the forthcoming trixie
release, where "who" is not particularly functional as discussed.

I have no idea what tangent you are going off on now, and the rest of
your off-topic and self-inflicted issues with hosts files will not be
tackled (again) by me. All I will say for the archives is that as
usual the complaints are entirely without merit.

Do not feed me

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Mon, 31 Mar 2025 09:09:24 +0300
Henrik Ahlgren <[email protected]> wrote:

Mike Castle <[email protected]> writes:

The whole utmp stuff is flaky, a best effort system that might give
some resemblance to reality.

I believe /run/utmp is gone in trixie, after systemd was upgraded to
256.5-2.

I don't see it on either of my two instances of trixie.

The command `w` still works fine.

Yup.

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1080330

Well, that's far more than I want to read. :-) But at least I now know
that the Powers That Be are aware of the situation. I hope that this
will be fixed before trixie is released.

Thank you.

--
Does anybody read signatures any more?

https://charlescurley.com
https://charlescurley.com/blog/

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Mon, Mar 31, 2025 at 09:09:24AM +0300, Henrik Ahlgren wrote:

Mike Castle <[email protected]> writes:
I believe /run/utmp is gone in trixie, after systemd was upgraded to
256.5-2.

If you touch /run/utmp it will magically start working again.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On Tue, 1 Apr 2025 15:19:48 -0400
Michael Stone <[email protected]> wrote:

If you touch /run/utmp it will magically start working again.

Thank you.

To be pedantic, any logins subsequent to touching it will show up. It
is necessary to touch it after a reboot. So a nice workaround.

--
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https://charlescurley.com
https://charlescurley.com/blog/

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On Tue, Apr 01, 2025 at 03:03:34PM -0600, Charles Curley wrote:

On Tue, 1 Apr 2025 15:19:48 -0400>Michael Stone <[email protected]> wrote:

If you touch /run/utmp it will magically start working again.

Thank you.

To be pedantic, any logins subsequent to touching it will show up. It
is necessary to touch it after a reboot. So a nice workaround.

Yeah. I'm working on it; I'd like for both mechanisms to work for trixie because IMO the transition was premature and the replacement isn't 100%
ready.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On Tue, Apr 01, 2025 at 15:03:34 -0600, Charles Curley wrote:

On Tue, 1 Apr 2025 15:19:48 -0400
Michael Stone <[email protected]> wrote:

If you touch /run/utmp it will magically start working again.

Thank you.

To be pedantic, any logins subsequent to touching it will show up. It
is necessary to touch it after a reboot. So a nice workaround.

It should be possible to create this file as part of the boot sequence,
before user logins are even allowed, yes? If nothing else, you could
create an rc.local file (don't forget +x). But I think systemd also
has some sort of mechanism for creating files at boot time.

See:
systemd-tmpfiles(8)
tmpfiles.d(5)

Of course it's more complex than creating an rc.local file, but take
your pick.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On Tue, 1 Apr 2025 18:14:46 -0400
Michael Stone <[email protected]> wrote:

To be pedantic, any logins subsequent to touching it will show up. It
is necessary to touch it after a reboot. So a nice workaround.

Yeah. I'm working on it; I'd like for both mechanisms to work for
trixie because IMO the transition was premature and the replacement
isn't 100% ready.

Sorry, I didn't realize you are the maintainer. Thank you for doing
that. I will test who from time to time, then. Let me know if there is
anything specific I should look at.

--
Does anybody read signatures any more?

https://charlescurley.com
https://charlescurley.com/blog/

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On Tue, 1 Apr 2025 19:30:43 -0400
Greg Wooledge <[email protected]> wrote:

To be pedantic, any logins subsequent to touching it will show up.
It is necessary to touch it after a reboot. So a nice workaround.

It should be possible to create this file as part of the boot
sequence, before user logins are even allowed, yes? If nothing else,
you could create an rc.local file (don't forget +x). But I think
systemd also has some sort of mechanism for creating files at boot
time.

See:
systemd-tmpfiles(8)
tmpfiles.d(5)

Of course it's more complex than creating an rc.local file, but take
your pick.

Something like that should work. However, even that is a workaround.
I'd rather see a more elegant fix in the package.

--
Does anybody read signatures any more?

https://charlescurley.com
https://charlescurley.com/blog/

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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