bug#12778: Failure when running check-root make target

[Voelker, Bernhard]

Andrew Warshall wrote (Monday, November 05, 2012 4:19 PM):

> On Mon, 5 Nov 2012 15:46:32 +0000
> "Voelker, Bernhard" <address@hidden> wrote:
>>   $ sudo env PATH="$PATH"  make NON_ROOT_USERNAME=nobody check-TESTS
>>   PASS: [...]
>>   ../build-aux/test-driver: line 95:  5158 Aborted
>> "$@" > $log_file 2>&1 FAIL: test-getlogin
>
> You've uncovered bug #11150, I believe. Is this in an xterm? The
> getlogin test fails for me too there (at least, it's done so for a
> while), and arguably rightly so. Basically, all that getlogin() does is
> to look the TTY it's connected to up in /var/run/utmp. This should list
> who's logged in at every terminal. Unfortunately, xterm doesn't write
> to /var/run/utmp, so getlogin() fails in this case. Whether you think
> this counts as a bug in getlogin() is up to you; anyway, it's different
> (I assume) from the issue we were having.
>
> If you want to complain about the getlogin() issue, by the way, 
> that should go to the bug-gnulib list (at least, that's where it got
> forwarded before).

Well, I don't mind. Actually, I find it more important to know
whether gnulib tests should be run as root or not: are the gnulib
tests secure enough to be run as root? I don't know, but I don't
think a dependant project like coreutils should run them as root.

Have a nice day,
Berny