tlog-rec-session does not create an utmp entry, leading the “who am i” command to fail

[casantos]

tlog-rec-session allocates a new pseudo-terminal for the recorded user session. Since the who command searches for an entry corresponding the current terminal in the run/utmp file, that search always fails. For example, in my test system I have user newuser:

# getent passwd user newuser
newuser:x:1001:1001::/home/newuser:/usr/bin/tlog-rec-session

So a newuser session becomes

[root@rhel-8-1 tmp]# tty
/dev/pts/0
[root@rhel-8-1 ~]# su - newuser
Locale charset is ANSI_X3.4-1968 (ASCII)
Assuming locale environment is lost and charset is UTF-8

ATTENTION! Your session is being recorded!

[newuser@rhel-8-1 ~]$ id
uid=1001(newuser) gid=1001(newuser) groups=1001(newuser) context=unconfined_u:unconfined_r:unconfined_t:s0-s0:c0.c1023
[newuser@rhel-8-1 ~]$ tty
/dev/pts/1
[newuser@rhel-8-1 ~]$ ps aufwww|head -n 6
USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
root      8947  0.0  0.2  26712  5224 pts/0    Ss   17:57   0:00 -bash
root      9356  0.0  0.5 187336 10648 pts/0    S+   18:08   0:00  \_ su - newuser
tlog      9357  0.0  0.4 121780  7488 pts/0    S+   18:08   0:00      \_ -tlog-rec-session
newuser   9358  0.0  0.2  24564  5208 pts/1    Ss   18:08   0:00          \_ -bash
newuser   9436  0.0  0.2  57180  3964 pts/1    R+   18:11   0:00              \_ ps aufwww
[newuser@rhel-8-1 ~]$ who am i
[newuser@rhel-8-1 ~]$ 

The solution requires modifying tlog-rec-session to add an entry in the utmp file so the heuristics used by the who command succeeds.