LXDM logins not being logged in utmp

[Jani Uusitalo]

This is basically the same as bug #870297, but for LXDM.

Systems using LXDM have no entries in the utmp record for logins, so tools like 'w' and 'who' do not show LXDM sessions.

Testcase:
1. Start Lubuntu system
2. Log into session
3. Open gnome-terminal
4. Run 'who' command

Expected result:
You should see TWO entries (the first is from LXDM, the second is from gnome-terminal):
 tty7 YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM
 pts/0 YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM (:0)

Observed result:
You see only one entry:
 pts/0 YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM (:0)

Additional info:
Used gnome-terminal just for consistency with the LightDM report; lxterminal also doesn't seem to update login records so if you use it instead, observed result is actually "no entries at all" (and issue for another report). Also, bug #1027805 about wtmp records is similarly applicable to LXDM, but that remains to be fixed even in LightDM...

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: lxdm 0.4.1-0ubuntu6
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-50.76-generic 3.2.48
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-50-generic i686
ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu17.4
Architecture: i386
Date: Sun Jul 14 18:50:56 2013
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" - Release i386 (20101007)
MarkForUpload: True
SourcePackage: lxdm
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to precise on 2012-07-30 (348 days ago)

[Michael Bloom (mabloom)]

I don't think the authors consider this a bug. As of 18.04, it's still hardcoded this way. The following is one of two essentially (for your purposes) identical instances:

src/lxterminal.c:1252:
  vte_terminal_fork_command_full(
                    VTE_TERMINAL(term->vte),
                    VTE_PTY_NO_LASTLOG | VTE_PTY_NO_UTMP | VTE_PTY_NO_WTMP,
                    pwd,
                    exec,
                    env,
                    G_SPAWN_SEARCH_PATH | G_SPAWN_FILE_AND_ARGV_ZERO,
                    NULL,
                    NULL,
                    &term->pid,
                    NULL);

Probably, replacing those flags with a zero in both cases would be sufficient for a personal system, although I haven't checked for unanticipated consequences.
In my opinion, they should have at least made it an option to configure.

I did a quick test just now, of manually zeroing the argument in gdb, which verified that something like the following should work:
Probably something like:
#if USE_UTMP
#define LOG_UTMP VTE_PTY_NO_LASTLOG | VTE_PTY_NO_UTMP | VTE_PTY_NO_WTMP
#else
#define LOG_UTMP 0
#endif

except it only works for root, presumably because before the call to the fork (or spawn) routine, there must be a setuid call that is too early. I hope it's not in the vte library, but I doubt it, if other terminals (such as xterm) do the right thing.