On 2023-07-31 20:13 -0400, Thomas Dickey wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 31, 2023 at 05:56:59PM +0200, Sven Joachim wrote:
>> Package: xterm
>> Version: 384-1
>> Severity: minor
>>
>> The path to the utmp(5) file in the xterm manpage is wrong:
>>
>> ,----
>> | $ man xterm | grep -A1 /utmp
>> | /etc/utmp
>> | the system log file, which records user logins.
>> `----
>>
>> That should read /var/run/utmp rather than /etc/utmp. The minstall
>> script tries to detect the path to the utmp file and substitute the
>> correct value, but in the build chroot /var/run/utmp has apparently been
>> absent, as no-one has ever logged in there.
>
> yes... /etc/utmp appears to be the convention on AIX and HPUX.
> I could put that last, (along with /var/adm), since those are
> systems where people actually log in -- odd, but perhaps the
> default should be the system where the file is least likely to
> exist :-)
That would make sense if the autodetection worked on the other systems,
but in a world where distributors build packages in chroots and
containers this is generally not the case.
I checked the xterm manpage in the packages for Arch Linux, Fedora
Rawhide, Mageia Cauldron and Opensuse Tumbleweed. All but the last of
these do not only mention /etc/utmp but also /etc/wtmp in the FILES
section, and I am pretty sure those two files do not exist.
Since autodetection for the paths to the utmp and wtmp files does not
work reliably, maybe new configure options could help packagers?
Cheers,
Sven
