Re: Pesky message: cannot stat /var/run/utmp. Please "unset watch".

At Thu, 23 Jul 2026 10:12:31 -0400 Greg Wooledge <[email protected]> wrote:

> 
> On Thu, Jul 23, 2026 at 09:15:05 -0400, Robert Heller wrote:
> > On a fresh install of trixie (Debian 13), I am getting this message.  Where is
> > it coming from?
> > 
> > The message is:
> > 
> > cannot stat /var/run/utmp.  Please "unset watch".
> 
> It would help enormously if you told us what command you ran to produce
> the message.

I'm not running any partitular command.  This message occurs at every shell 
prompt.  I do have a set prompt in my .cshrc (I am using tcsh as my shell):

#
# set prompt
#
set me = `whoami`
if ("$me" != "root") set prompt="`hostname`% "
if ("$me" == "root") set prompt="`hostname`# "
#


> 
> That said, the utmp file is no longer supported, partly because its
> format is incompatible with 64-bit time_t.
> 
> https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/release-notes/issues.en.html#the-last-lastb-and-lastlog-commands-have-been-replaced
> 
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