[PATCH 20/52] login: Add 64-bit time support to utmp/utmpx

[Joseph Myers]

On Tue, 27 Apr 2021, Florian Weimer via Libc-alpha wrote:

> The interface was fine when a system had a few fixed terminal lines that
> weren't equivalent.  But I think it's mostly useless today.

At a higher level, I think it's still useful to be able to list logged-in 
user sessions (and e.g. how long they have been idle) on a multi-user 
system, to help identify e.g. users to consult about a possible reboot.  
In the absence of utmp, you need some other system for tracking such 
information about sessions, and applications such as "w" and "who" need to 
be taught to use such other API in place of utmp, before it can be 
considered obsolete.

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@codesourcery.com