`users`, `who` and `w` commands are broken

[mal1k-me]

users, who and w coomands do not list logged in users because systemd lacks UTMP feature support.

─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
 DietPi v9.19.2 (beta) : 00:31 - Sun 11/16/2025
 ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
 - Device model : RPi 4 Model B (aarch64)
 - Uptime : up 7 minutes
 - CPU temp : 50 °C / 122 °F : Running warm, but safe
 - RAM usage : 236 of 919 MiB (26%)
 - Load average : 0.16, 0.18, 0.11 (4 cores)
 - Disk usage (RootFS) : 21G of 58G (37%)
 ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────

❯ systemctl --version
systemd 257 (257.9-1~deb13u1)
+PAM +AUDIT +SELINUX +APPARMOR +IMA +IPE +SMACK +SECCOMP +GCRYPT -GNUTLS +OPENSSL +ACL +BLKID +CURL +ELFUTILS +FIDO2 +IDN2 -IDN +IPTC +KMOD +LIBCRYPTSETUP +LIBCRYPTSETUP_PLUGINS +LIBFDISK +PCRE2 +PWQUALITY +P11KIT +QRENCODE +TPM2 +BZIP2 +LZ4 +XZ +ZLIB +ZSTD +BPF_FRAMEWORK +BTF -XKBCOMMON -UTMP +SYSVINIT +LIBARCHIVE

❯ users

❯ who

❯ w
 00:32:18 up 7 min,  0 users,  load average: 0.11, 0.17, 0.11
USER     TTY      FROM             LOGIN@   IDLE   JCPU   PCPU  WHAT

❯ ls /var/run/utmp
ls: cannot access '/var/run/utmp': No such file or directory

❯ ls /var/run/utmpx
ls: cannot access '/var/run/utmpx': No such file or directory

[MichaIng]

Yes that is a known change with Debian Trixie: classic wtmp has been removed, since it is inherently not Year 2038 safe. wtmpdb and lastlog2 (for lastlog command) are the replacements. I am not 100% sure whether it is fully up-to-date, but here the related wiki entry: https://wiki.debian.org/pam_lastlog2%20and%20wtmpdb

w and who should work with wtmpdb.

[mal1k-me]

That's interesting. Thank you.

[MichaIng]

That information is actually missing in our Trixie article: https://dietpi.com/blog/?p=4014#other-changes

Note-to-myself to add this tomorrow.