logname returns "logname: no login name" with gnome-terminal

[Justin Luth]

Logname fails to return a login name in Xenial Unity. I expected it to return my login name (especially when running as "sudo"). Strangely, it works in gnome-shell and mate editions of Xenial.

It is only a problem with gnome-terminal. It works in xterm and uxterm and in tty1...

Ubuntu Xenial Xerus (development branch) Release 16.04.

logname is unique because it returns the underlying username (and not root) when in sudo mode, so this utility is fairly critical and cannot be substituted with whoami or id -un or any other command that I know of.

[Egmont Koblinger (egmont-gmail)]

See https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=747046

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Rael Gugelmin Cunha (rael-gc)]

If I correctly understood, based on the link pasted by Edgmont, gnome terminal is no more writing a utmp entry when called as a login shell.

[Tres Finocchiaro (tres-finocchiaro)]

For those looking for an alternative to logname, $SUDO_USER works pretty well. http://askubuntu.com/a/849469/412004