On 2026-02-13 03:34:36 -0500, Thomas Dickey wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 13, 2026 at 04:12:00AM +0100, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> > But does this make "wall" output the message to xterm?
>
> In a quick check, it does.
Great. I can see in term-utils/wall.c from util-linux that utmp
support is still there. (I doubt that shutdown is in the same case,
though, because it is directly implemented by systemd.)
I don't see any reason to remove utmp support (at least until another
system would replace it -- systemd currently cannot, or it should have
clear documentation on what to do).
The claimed Y2038 issue for utmp isn't one here: the only reason that
utmp is currently affected is that there is a hack to support bi-arch
platforms: in the utmp(5) man page:
/* The ut_session and ut_tv fields must be the same size when
compiled 32- and 64-bit. This allows data files and shared
memory to be shared between 32- and 64-bit applications. */
#if __WORDSIZE == 64 && defined __WORDSIZE_COMPAT32
int32_t ut_session; /* Session ID (getsid(2)),
used for windowing */
struct {
int32_t tv_sec; /* Seconds */
int32_t tv_usec; /* Microseconds */
} ut_tv; /* Time entry was made */
#else
long ut_session; /* Session ID */
struct timeval ut_tv; /* Time entry was made */
#endif
But anyway, ABIs with a 32-bit based struct timeval will go away once
2038 approaches.
--
Vincent Lefèvre <[email protected]> - Web: <https://www.vinc17.net/>
100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: <https://www.vinc17.net/blog/>
Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / Pascaline project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)
