New submission from Eryk Sun <eryk...@gmail.com>:
os.getlogin() is supposed to return the name of the user logged in on the
"controlling terminal" of the process. Windows doesn't have POSIX terminals;
however, every process does belong to a terminal/desktop session that can be
connected either to the physical console or a remote desktop. A standard user
can call WTSQuerySessionInformation (an RPC to the Local Session Manager) to
get the user name (i.e. WTSUserName) for the current session. ISTM that this is
the closest analog to POSIX getlogin() that exists in Windows.
A caveat is that session 0 ("services") is never connected to the physical
console. Thus there's no associated user account name.
os.getlogin() currently calls GetUserName (an RPC to the Local Security
Authority), which returns the user name from the caller's effective token. If
os.getlogin() is changed to return the session user, posixmodule.c could still
wrap GetUserName privately as nt._getusername().
If the calling thread is impersonating, nt._getusername should temporarily
revert to the process token (i.e. the real user), since this will usually be
consistent with USERNAME. That said, getting the effective user can be useful
for logging, so there should also be an option to return the effective user
instead of the real user.
Note that the user name of the SYSTEM logon (and thus the USERNAME environment
variable in a SYSTEM process) is actually "%COMPUTERNAME%$". It's noteworthy
that GetUserName instead returns "SYSTEM" for this case. The "NETWORK SERVICE"
logon also uses "%COMPUTERNAME%$", but in this case GetUserName returns
"%COMPUTERNAME%$" instead of "NETWORK SERVICE".
A pair of high-level Python functions named getuser() and geteuser() could be
added in os.py. These functions would return the real and effective user name
of the caller, respectively. In Windows, os.getuser() would return the USERNAME
environment variable and otherwise fall back on nt._getusername(). In POSIX, it
would return the value of the first defined variable among LOGNAME, USER, and
LNAME, and otherwise fall back on pwd.getpwuid(os.getuid()).pw_name. In
Windows, os.geteuser() would return nt_getusername(effective=True). In POSIX it
would return pwd.getpwuid(os.geteuid()).pw_name.
Currently getpass.getuser() always looks for environment variables named
LOGNAME, USER, LNAME, and finally USERNAME. This is an odd choice on Windows. I
wouldn't expect Windows users to know about and respect the special status of
the first 3 variable names. getpass.getuser() also falls back on using the pwd
module, which is another odd choice on Windows. It isn't worth removing or
modifying this function, but the docs could encourage using the proposed
os.getuser() and os.geteuser() functions on Windows and new code.
----------
components: Library (Lib), Windows
messages: 310724
nosy: eryksun, paul.moore, steve.dower, tim.golden, zach.ware
priority: normal
severity: normal
stage: test needed
status: open
title: redesign Windows os.getlogin, and add os.getuser
type: enhancement
versions: Python 3.8
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Python tracker <rep...@bugs.python.org>
<https://bugs.python.org/issue32671>
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