:: [devuan-dev] bug#900: procps: w doe…
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Author: Mark Hindley
Date:  
To: Andrew Bower
CC: 900
Subject: [devuan-dev] bug#900: procps: w does not query elogind for sessions
Andrew,

On Mon, Jul 28, 2025 at 09:06:10PM +0100, Andrew Bower wrote:
> > I believe the original impetus to remove libsystemd linkage from procps
> > was to reduce libsystemd infiltration into 'core' utilities.
>
> I am all in favour of that ambition. I don't think the key
> building-block packages should depend on libsystemd, hence my
> disappointment when coreutils recently gained the dependency (should we
> be forking that?)


Hmmm, yes, conceivably.

> > Devuan systems without elogind are viable (I use sway/seatd as my daily
> > driver) so just adding elogind support to procps isn't a universal
> > solution.
>
> Does sway/seatd write to utmp? Does it do anything else?


I think not: I run it from the console, so it relies on login(1).

> > Do you have a suggestion or idea as to a way forward?
>
> I see we have forked util-linux, so one thing we could do is to fix the
> build of login(1) to restore writing to utmp, for virtual console
> logins. That assumes that this is what has actually been broken - I
> haven't checked yet.


That seems sane. I'll see if I can find the commit.

Thanks

Mark