I'm running an up-to-date version of LinuxMint (an Ubuntu-fork), and I've noticed that who
, w
and last
have all stopped registering activity on terminal-emulators (like xterm
) - eg. if you open a terminal under X. The only thing registered, is that the WindowManager/DesktopEnviroment is runnung on a VirtualTerminal (eg. /dev/tty7 or /dev/tty8).
If I log-in to one of the VirtualTerminals on F1-F6 (/dev/tty1-6), that is registered. Also if I log-in with ssh
in a terminal-emulator under X. Multiple "terminals" made with screen
are also registered (even when used in a terminal-emulator under X)
But just opening a terminal-emulator (and running programs in it) are no longer noticed.
AFAIK, users currently logged-in are registered in /var/run/utmp, while previous log-ins (and boots) are logged in /var/log/wtmp - and these files are used by who
, w
and last
.
So for some reason, opening a terminal-emulator in X is no-longer registered in these logs. While there are some sense in this (I'm not actually logging-in), I would much preferred that it was logged... not at least since I then could use w
to see what I'm doing in various shells.
So is there a way to turn back on the logging of terminal-emulators? Preferably so that also how long they stayed open was also registered...
xterm
. I don't know what happens underxterm
and how to re-enable utmp logging. In case you usegnome-terminal
or othervte
-based emulator, utmp logging has been removed from them, see bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=747046.xterm
mostly because it is the "standard" terminal-emulator.