Re: Bullseye - who and users return nothing

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

On Tue 25 Jan 2022, at 03:02, Gareth Evans <donotspam@fastmail.fm> wrote:
> 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 -

And fwiw (from a comment in the link you provided)

$ sudo journalctl -b _COMM=systemd-tmpfiles
-- Journal begins at Sat 2021-08-21 14:27:06 BST, ends at Tue 2022-01-25 03:04:>
-- No entries --