[Pkg-shadow-devel] Bug#505071: Bug#505071: closed ... fixed in shadow 1:4.1.3-1

[Paul Szabo]

Dear Nicolas,

> It works when you use a tool which sets UTMP before it provides the shell.
> telnetd does not, but for example xterm does.

More to the point: login does not. To belabour the point: if you "come"
from login (e.g. via telnet), then login provides a utmp entry, but that
refers to the PID of login which is the parent of your shell; using
"exec login" does not "see" that (correctly set) utmp entry.

I checked and "exec login" does not work from an ssh login either.
Yes, I know it would work from an xterm.

In other words: your favourite tool is (should be) login; it does
provide an utmp entry, but not in a way that it can use it itself.
We could say that login is self-contradictory, inconsistent.

Cheers, Paul

Paul Szabo   psz at maths.usyd.edu.au   http://www.maths.usyd.edu.au/u/psz/
School of Mathematics and Statistics   University of Sydney    Australia