who or w command produces no tty information about terminal

[Terrance]

~$ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS
Release: 16.04

~$ apt-cache policy gnome-terminal
gnome-terminal:
  Installed: 3.18.3-1ubuntu1
  Candidate: 3.18.3-1ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 3.18.3-1ubuntu1 500
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

When running the `who` or `w` commands in a gnome-terminal window, it is not shown. Nor can you send a write username [tty] command to the gnome-terminal that is open.

From the gnome-terminal:

~$ w
 14:41:59 up 6:01, 3 users, load average: 0.19, 0.25, 0.18
USER TTY FROM LOGIN@ IDLE JCPU PCPU WHAT
terrance tty7 :0 08:40 6:01m 25:07 0.08s /sbin/upstart -
terrance pts/1 :0.0 11:00 2:58m 0.47s 0.47s bash
terrance pts/6 :0.0 11:02 1:58 0.46s 0.46s bash
~$ tty
/dev/pts/7
~$ write terrance /dev/pts/7
write: terrance is not logged in on pts/7

From a xfce4-terminal window:

~$ w
 14:52:27 up 6:12, 3 users, load average: 0.34, 0.28, 0.21
USER TTY FROM LOGIN@ IDLE JCPU PCPU WHAT
terrance tty7 :0 08:40 6:11m 25:23 0.08s /sbin/upstart -
terrance pts/1 :0.0 11:00 3:09m 0.47s 0.47s bash
terrance pts/6 :0.0 11:02 1.00s 0.48s 0.01s w
~$ tty
/dev/pts/6
~$ write terrance /dev/pts/6

Message from terrance@terrance-ubuntu on pts/6 at 14:53 ...
EOF

This seems to be only showing problems in the gnome-terminal. Any other terminal I have tried has worked successfully.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 16.04
Package: gnome-terminal 3.18.3-1ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.13.0-32.35~16.04.1-generic 4.13.13
Uname: Linux 4.13.0-32-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia_uvm nvidia_drm nvidia_modeset nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.20.1-0ubuntu2.15
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: XFCE
Date: Sat Feb 3 14:48:05 2018
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gnome-terminal
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Terrance (kato223)]

One way around this is to run `ssh localhost` in the terminal window then it works.

[Egmont Koblinger (egmont-gmail)]

VTE no longer does utmp logging. This was an upstream change made almost three years ago at https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=747046, and is clearly not going to get reverted by upstream.

Actually, most other VTE-based emulators (e.g. xfce4-terminal) are also affected in newer Ubuntu releases, while a few VTE-based emulators (can't recall which ones, sorry) added back utmp logging of their own.

Some other terminal emulators, such as terminology and st (Ubuntu package: stterm) don't do utmp logging either.

Two possible command line solution are mentioned in comments 34 & 35 of the aforementioned link. They could be set up as "Custom command" in gnome-terminal, and are clearly more lightweight than ssh.

Ubuntu should ship such a command line tool if it thinks that utmp logging is important, which was argued against in the VTE bug.