On 2026-05-06 22:12:08 +0200, Peter Dey wrote: > As of package version 5.0.1-1, Debian builds screen with --disable-utmp, so > screen no longer writes/manages utmp/wtmp. > Closing these reports as not applicable to current package behaviour.
This had actually been done already in screen 4.9.1-2: screen (4.9.1-2) unstable; urgency=medium * Team upload (debian/ namespace). * 63-add-utempter-switch: fix variable name * Stop building with utempter * Disable utmp writing (Closes: #1104514) * Update ptymode to 0600 in line with rest of the system -- Chris Hofstaedtler <[email protected]> Sat, 10 May 2025 22:28:23 +0200 This was needed as libutempter got broken because /run/utmp was no longer created by systemd, but this was eventually fixed in libutempter, which now creates /run/utmp since this was needed by xterm (in order to get "wall" messages): libutempter (1.2.1-5) unstable; urgency=medium * debian/libutempter0.postrm: drop unnecessary cleanup [ Thomas E. Dickey ] * d/control: bump to std version 4.7.3 * d/watch: use https url * create /run/utmp file using db_installtmpfiles (Closes: #1125682) * d/patches: fix lintian warnings * d/patches: fix compiler warnings -- Christian Göttsche <[email protected]> Wed, 25 Feb 2026 22:42:56 +0100 So, if needed, libutempter support could be re-added to screen. However, it has always been broken in screen v4 (calls to libutempter done not when then should have been). I don't know the status with screen v5. Note: As described, libutempter writes to utmp and wtmp files. Concerning utmp, this is still useful for "wall" (which still supports utmp; and there does not seem to be a replacement yet, possibly except systemd-logind, but this is not clear as this is supposed to manage user logins, not terminal sessions). Concerning wtmp, writing to this file does not seem to yield any issue, but there are no longer any tool to read it as they have moved to wtmpdb, and I think that libutempter should move to wtmpdb too. -- 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)
