From: Bruno Haible <bruno@clisp.org>
Date: Tue, 4 Aug 2026 15:17:27 +0000 (+0200)
Subject: maint: document the --with-wtmpdb option
X-Git-Url: http://git.ipfire.org/index.cgi?a=commitdiff_plain;ds=inline;p=thirdparty%2Fcoreutils.git

maint: document the --with-wtmpdb option

* DEPENDENCIES: Mention wtmpdb.
* NEWS: Mention the effects of --with-wtmpdb.
---

diff --git a/DEPENDENCIES b/DEPENDENCIES
index 375b08d205..491f267cd0 100644
--- a/DEPENDENCIES
+++ b/DEPENDENCIES
@@ -15,6 +15,18 @@
     - On Red Hat distributions: systemd-devel.
     - Other: https://repology.org/project/systemd/versions
 
+* wtmpdb libraries
+  + Recommended if wtmpdb is present on the system.
+    Needed for fetching login, logout, and boot times from
+    /var/log/wtmp.db instead of from the file /var/run/wtmp.
+    Related 'configure' option: --with-wtmpdb.
+  + Homepage:
+    https://github.com/thkukuk/wtmpdb
+  + Pre-built package name:
+     - On Debian and Debian-based systems: libwtmpdb-dev,
+     - On Red Hat distributions: --.
+     - Other: https://repology.org/project/wtmpdb/versions
+
 * libselinux
   + Mandatory on Linux systems that support SELinux.
     Needed so that the file utilities respect the security contexts,
diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index 5dea7828c7..22ca32683b 100644
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -83,6 +83,10 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS                                    -*- outline -*-
 
 ** Improvements
 
+  When built with the configure option '--with-wtmpdb', invocations of
+  'who /var/log/wtmp' and 'users /var/log/wtmp' use the wtmpdb database
+  instead of the file /var/log/wtmp.  This makes them Y2038-safe.
+
   'df', 'du', 'ls', 'od', 'pr', and 'sort' now escape invalid arguments in error
   messages for options expecting an integer.