Re: Y2038, glibc and utmp/utmpx on 64bit architectures

Anna <[email protected]> Fri, 3 Mar 2023 17:09:24 -0300

Newsgroups	dev.linux.lists.distributions
Message-ID	<20230303200924.b6mpmaoh2m62ejkf@lily>

> Not really, as I wrote in my blog. utmps does not solve all problems
> with utmp/utmps and it's just another daemon doing the same things as
> systemd-logind is already doing.

In the blog post, it was included the following:
> Proposal
>    1. Change all applications, which read utmp, to query systemd-logind instead
>    2. Stop writing utmp entries after we are sure nobody uses them anymore

> [...]

> What if I don’t use systemd?

> This heavily depends on the libc and init system you are using. For s6 exists e.g.
> a secure utmp (utmps) implementation, while on the other side musl libc has no
> support for utmp/wtmp at all.

My issue with this is basically leaving everyone that doesn't use
systemd to fend for themselves. We patch those apps to use logind,
remove utmp and then what does non-systemd distros do?

While having two daemons (umtps and logind) at the same time is not that
great of a solution either, it would be better to have an interface that
can work with different backends, so that in a systemd system, you'd
just use logind, but in a non-systemd system, you'd use a standalone
daemon, such as utmps, both using options using the same API on the
application side.

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