Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ginosko!usc!bloom-beacon!EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU!jim
From: jim@EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU (Jim Fulton)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Why does every xterm create an entry in /usr/utmp?
Message-ID: <8909051822.AA19390@expo.lcs.mit.edu>
Date: 5 Sep 89 18:22:05 GMT
References: <8909051759.AA11810@gaak.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Organization: X Consortium, MIT Laboratory for Computer Science
Lines: 15


                I believe it was somebody's idea about how to fix a "bug"
    that existed before it.  I consider the "fix" worse than the original
    "bug".  The original "bug" was that the reported idle time for a user
    was usually wildly wrong.

Nope.  The problem was that there was no way to tell whether or not somebody
was "logged onto" a given machine (i.e. running a shell on on a
pseudo-terminal that could be contacted).  In particular, it made notifying
people of impending system shutdowns, etc. rather tricky.

You potentially have the same problem with all X applications, but the
terminal emulator was the 95% case (you budding session manager writers
might want to think about how "console windows" extend into the multi-machine
environment :-).