#1139309 w, who or finger don't show logged on users after upgrade to Trixie

Package:
procps
Source:
procps
Description:
/proc file system utilities
Submitter:
Harald Hannelius
Date:
2026-06-11 09:33:02 UTC
Severity:
normal
#1139309#5
Date:
2026-06-08 11:56:29 UTC
From:
To:
$ w
  14:55:47 up  3:58,  3 users,  load average: 0.07, 0.05, 0.00
USER             TTY      FROM                                 LOGIN@   IDLE
JCPU   PCPU  WHAT
$ who
$ finger
No one logged on.


I expected to see a list of people logged on.

nsswitch is set to get users from files and ldap.
#1139309#10
Date:
2026-06-10 07:49:21 UTC
From:
To:
That looks like its the writing part of the process going wrong with 3
different systems not showing users, rather than the reading side.

w uses information  like what "loginctl list-users" shows, what does that
command give you?

Also is this true for all types of user access? local vty, windows, ssh?

nsswitch is set to get users from files and ldap.
That side which is pam-account is probably ok, what about pam sessions (e.g
session lines in /etc/pam.d/*), anything different?

 - Craig
#1139309#15
Date:
2026-06-10 07:54:53 UTC
From:
To:
I think I'm actually barking up the wrong tree here.

It looks like if I use ssh to log on, my session shows up in w's output. If
I use mosh, I don't.

From a mosh-session;

$ w
  10:52:21 up 1 day, 23:55,  2 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
USER             TTY      FROM                                 LOGIN@   IDLE   JCPU   PCPU  WHAT
$ loginctl list-users
UID USER   LINGER STATE
xxx harald no     closing

1 users listed.
$

Log om over ssh;

$ w
  10:53:06 up 1 day, 23:56,  3 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
USER             TTY      FROM                                 LOGIN@   IDLE   JCPU   PCPU  WHAT
harald           pts/0    2001:xxxx:xxx:xxx:::6                 10:53
2.00s  0.02s   ?    w
$ loginctl list-users
UID USER   LINGER STATE
xxx harald no     active

1 users listed.
$

All users log on over ssh solely.

These are beyond me, haven't touched any of those.
#1139309#20
Date:
2026-06-10 12:30:39 UTC
From:
To:
I can easily repro this with mosh. Probably it doesn't register its
session with logind. Best to reassign this problem to mosh, IMO.

Best,
Chris
#1139309#25
Date:
2026-06-10 12:40:15 UTC
From:
To:
Thanks.

I notice that talk doesn't work either anymore. I see that write got removed
some time ago already, but talkd and ytalk are still installable packages.
They don't see anyone logged on either with ssh or mosh.
#1139309#30
Date:
2026-06-10 16:00:34 UTC
From:
To:
yatlk was removed in 2019.

talkd probably wants a bug then.

Chris
#1139309#35
Date:
2026-06-11 09:30:56 UTC
From:
To:
reassign 1139309 mosh
retitle 1139309 mosh doesn't create user entries
affects 1139309 procps
thankyou

Hi,
  Harald reported that w (and finger and who) didn't show users, but it
looks like mosh isn't registering them; unlike say ssh which the users do
show up.

This might be due to the difference between a user session and a terminal
leader with a user attached but I would have thought there would be at
least one user in any case.

 - Craig

On Wed, 10 Jun 2026 at 22:40, Harald Hannelius <harald.hannelius@arcada.fi> wrote: