[mosh-users] Mosh session logging

[Alex Chernyakhovsky]

Hi Andrew,

mosh doesn't use pam directly, and instead leverages ssh to do the initial
authentication checks (whether it uses PAM or not is up to your system
configuration). There's actually a long-standing open issue (
https://github.com/mobile-shell/mosh/issues/529) about improving this, but
there's no solution agreed upon or timeline decided.

Depending on what you want to accomplish, a wrapper script around
mosh-server might be the expedient way to solve your problem.

Sincerely,
-Alex

On Wed, Apr 16, 2025 at 9:53 AM Andrew C Aitchison <mosh at aitchison.me.uk>
wrote:

>
> I use mosh to connect to a ubuntu machine.
> I had scripts which could tell me whether a session came from
> my phone or my tablet (assuming it was initiated on the local
> network), but recently bit rot has set in.
>
> The fundamental problem is that for a roaming protocol,
> the ip address does not identify the client device.
>
> First the transition to 64bit time with Ubuntu Oracular 24.10,
> meant a switch from wtmp to wtmpdb and pam stopped recording the pty
> so that `last` just said 'ssh' in the terminal column.
>
> Now Ubuntu Plucky 25.04 has broken `who`
>
> https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/plucky-puffin-release-notes/48687#p-120902-systemd-v2574-8
> as "systemd is no longer built with utmp support".
>
> I'm wondering whether adding a pam module or config for mosh
> is the way to go ?
>
> Does anyone else have experience, thoughts or ideas on logging mosh
> sessions on current OSes ?
>
> Thanks,
>
> --
> Andrew C. Aitchison                      Kendal, UK
>                     andrew at aitchison.me.uk
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> mosh-users at mit.edu
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>
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