#1114951 coreutils: /usr/bin/who does not work after trixie upgrade

Package:
coreutils
Source:
coreutils
Description:
GNU core utilities
Submitter:
William Herrin
Date:
2026-01-08 06:29:03 UTC
Severity:
normal
#1114951#5
Date:
2025-09-11 23:24:59 UTC
From:
To:
Dear Maintainer,

   * What led up to the situation?
upgrade from debian 12 to 13

   * What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or
     ineffective)?

$ who
$ w
 16:15:13 up 4 min,  0 users,  load average: 0.01, 0.08, 0.04
USER     TTY      FROM             LOGIN@   IDLE   JCPU   PCPU  WHAT
$ users

   * What was the outcome of this action?
no logged in users shown

   * What outcome did you expect instead?
currently logged in users shown

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#1114951#10
Date:
2026-01-08 06:17:33 UTC
From:
To:
If "session optional pam_systemd.so" is omitted from
/etc/pam.d/common-session then who, w and users silently fail.

Since the new dependency on systemd is a major change to how these
utilities have functioned for decades and the listed line is only
default on fresh installs of Debian, the utility should not fail
without notifying the operator of the nature of the problem.