When I open a konsole under KDE wtmp/utmp should be updated with a login. Under my Gentoo installation they are not. So if I have four konsole windows open with active shell prompts, when I type w I should see four users (maybe five if you count the login from kdm) but instead I see zero users. If I start an xterm a login is correctly registered and the user count goes up by one.
I've done some research on this and have some additional information for this bug. From KDE bug #17296 konsole does not handle the updating of utmp/wtmp on login (it doesn't want to have it run as setuid root and open up a security hole). Instead it relies on the utempter utility to handle this update. Since Gentoo doesn't have this utility (and I didn't see it in emerge either), wtmp/utmp are not updated when a konsole shell is opened and hence the reported number of users on the system doesn't change. The reason why xterm does increment the number of users is that it's a setuid root program and updates wtmp/utmp. From the KDE bug report quoted above it looks like utempter has to be integrated into kdebase.
Ok, so all we need to do is add utempter to portage. I'll ask on -core first whether there's any reason not to as I'm not relly conversant with gentoo security arrangements.
OK, long-needed update: I'm still not sure on how utempter would fit into portage, and what I'd need to do security-wise to make it ok for the default config... Entirely my fault, of course. Back then I let this drop into the backgroud and worked on bugs I understood better...
Dan, where is it located again ? I think we should prob package it seperately, and then make xfree dep on it. That should be the most generic, as I can only think that more things X related will have support for it. Comments ?
It doesn't seem to have a homepage. The orig authors seem to be redhat. A google brings up various rpms and little else, the latest version appears to be 0.5.2 (and has been for some time). I've uploaded utempter-0.5.2.tar.gz to my homedir on chiba (just 12k), from a suse srpm. It's a really tiny thing (no configure even), compiles cleanly and looks ok. I'll test kdebase with it.
Oh and what does xfree do with it? Does xterm use it?
Added masked sys-apps/utempter ebuild. (Is that the right category, or should I rather put it in app-admin or dev-libs or something?)
kdebase 3.1 works nicely with the new utempter. konsole shells are now seen in who and utmp. Azarah, please handle the xfree side, then we can unmask utempter :-)
Just thought at the time we should get it in as soon as possible. Now I think whatever needed should depend on it. Anything that I manage that need attention?
Not unless xfree indeed can use it. I'll ask for people to inspect it security-wise etc. and add keywords for other archs, then I'll unmask it and add a dep to kdebase.
Seems noone responded to my call to test utempter :-( Well right now we have this freeze thingy, but once it's over I'll ask the security guys (directly this time) to have a look at it, and after that the different arch guys to add some keywords. Meanwhile if you want to use it just emerge it and then remerge kdebase.
Sorry Dan, been a bit busy. Btw, xfree-4.2.99.2 already had support for utemper, so I will look into supporting it in a bit :)
i can confirm that this works with kdebase-3.1.1 (ie. installed utempter and recompiled kdebase) ----- bangert@kniffel bangert $ w 13:21:04 up 40 min, 4 users, load average: 0.30, 0.17, 0.11 USER TTY FROM LOGIN@ IDLE JCPU PCPU WHAT bangert :0 - 12:41pm ? 0.00s 0.10s -:0 bangert pts/1 - 12:42pm 40:43 0.00s 0.35s kdeinit: kwrited bangert pts/2 - 1:19pm 1:40 0.34s 0.34s /bin/bash bangert pts/3 - 1:19pm 0.00s 0.35s 0.33s /bin/bash bangert@kniffel bangert $ --- this is what i get after logging in to kde-3.1.1 from kdm with to konsoles open
Going to reassign this to seemant as it's dependant on his finishing up of the xfree stuff. This way at least he'll know when it's appropriate to close this bug. Seemant: if you don't want this assigned to you, just reassign it back :)
Seems to be fixed for current versions of KDE/Konsole. Please comment if not.
