Re: Bullseye - who and users return nothing

["Gareth Evans" <donotspam@fastmail.fm>]

On Tue 25 Jan 2022, at 02:54, Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 25, 2022 at 01:31:35AM +0000, Gareth Evans wrote:
>> /var/run$ sudo touch utmp
>> /var/run$ sudo chown root:utmp utmp
>> /var/run$ sudo chmod 664 utmp
>> /var/run$ ls -l utmp
>> -rw-rw-r-- 1 root utmp 0 Jan 25 00:08 utmp
>> /var/run$ who
>> /var/run$
>> [logout, login]
>> /var/run$ ls -l /var/run/utmp
>> -rw-rw-r-- 1 root utmp 384 Jan 25 00:17 /var/run/utmp
>> $ who
>> user     tty7         2022-01-25 00:17 (:0)
>> $ sudo reboot
>> ...
>> $ ls -l /var/run/utmp
>> ls: cannot access '/var/run/utmp': No such file or directory
>
> A google search led me to <https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/47749>
> which says that the /run/utmp file is supposed to be created by
> "tmpfiles", specifically by the instructions in the configuration
> file /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/systemd.conf .
>

> On my system, /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/systemd.conf contains this line:
>
> F! /run/utmp 0664 root utmp -
>
> Does your system have this file, and if so, does it contain that line?

Thanks, yes:

$ sudo cat /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/systemd.conf | grep utmp
F! /run/utmp 0664 root utmp -