Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 16:41:21 +1000 From: Stephen McKay <syssgm@dtir.qld.gov.au> To: David Nugent <davidn@labs.usn.blaze.net.au> Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: xdm in /usr/X11R6/etc/rc.d problem Message-ID: <199705160641.QAA24599@ogre.dtir.qld.gov.au> In-Reply-To: <199705141427.AAA00677@labs.usn.blaze.net.au> from David Nugent at "Wed, 14 May 1997 14:27:33 %2B0000" References: <199705141427.AAA00677@labs.usn.blaze.net.au>
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On Wednesday, 14th May 1997, David Nugent wrote: >Lastlogin (part of the 'utmp' package) was relative easy. Defining >an extensible format for utmp/wtmp wasn't such a pushover, >unfortunately, once I had thought through all of the issues. > >If I post the code I'm working on to you for comment, is anyone >interested in looking at it? Ooh! Ooh! Pick me! I've been kicking myself every week for months now for not doing my version of the utmp/wtmp stuff. Please send your stuff to <mckay@freebsd.org>. >Bear in mind that there's a time-frame >to be kept with Xfree 3.3's impending release - we can either miss >this completely and hope that there's another release prior FreeBSD >3.0 (possible?) or we can finish the api now, so comments should be >fast. Forget trying to make the XFree86 3.3 deadline as the only result will be a broken API set in concrete. There will be another XFree86 release before FreeBSD 3.0-RELEASE. I'll bet you my 386 PC on it! :-) [Details of implementation zapped] >wtmp, however, is another thing. We can't easily change the >record size between reboots, because it just grows, and (right >now at least) everything assumes a uniform record size. Adding >more data to each record and we end up throwing out past >records, which is imho unacceptible, and allocating lots of >"spare" space to each record is an equally gross solution. You could put the record size in the last field as well as the first. Then reading backwards is easy. >I think the best format for wtmp will be a standard text line-feed >delimited file only... If you go text only, then just mark the start of record with a unique prefix. In fact, I'm keen on an extensible text format for both utmp and wtmp. I'll send you more concrete comments when I see the code. Stephen.
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