From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Mar 5 14:27:01 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B55231065671 for ; Wed, 5 Mar 2008 14:27:01 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from fbsd.questions@rachie.is-a-geek.net) Received: from snoogles.rachie.is-a-geek.net (rachie.is-a-geek.net [66.230.99.27]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 73AB08FC25 for ; Wed, 5 Mar 2008 14:27:01 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from fbsd.questions@rachie.is-a-geek.net) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by snoogles.rachie.is-a-geek.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id A91F61CE83; Wed, 5 Mar 2008 05:27:00 -0900 (AKST) From: Mel To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2008 15:26:57 +0100 User-Agent: KMail/1.9.7 References: <47CB4C0F.3090402@n3gqf.us> <44y78yr0dz.fsf@be-well.ilk.org> <47CE00BD.604@n3gqf.us> In-Reply-To: <47CE00BD.604@n3gqf.us> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200803051526.58350.fbsd.questions@rachie.is-a-geek.net> Cc: George Fazio Subject: Re: sa: user accounting initialization failed - FreeBSD 7-stable X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 05 Mar 2008 14:27:01 -0000 On Wednesday 05 March 2008 03:09:01 George Fazio wrote: > Lowell Gilbert wrote: > > George Fazio writes: > >> I'm seeing errors from sa in my daily run output. I read the man page > >> for sa(8) and some of the commands that were referenced under the see > >> also section. I'm completely lost. Could anyone point me in the > >> right direction? > >> > >> Here is a snippet of the output from the daily run output > >> > >> Rotating accounting logs and gathering statistics: > >> sa: converting user accounting stats: Inappropriate file type or format > >> sa: user accounting initialization failed > > > > Are you intending to use the system accounting functionality? If not, > > you probably don't need the files in /var/account at all (by default, > > there wouldn't be any). > > I probably turned them by accident on while hastily going through the > install. My (home) mail server had been down for nearly a week waiting > for new hardware to arrive, and I probably was not paying quite as much > attention as I should have been with the base install. While I do not > need the accounting feature, I was hoping to understand why it is not > working to broaden my understanding of how the system functions. I > guess I will do some more reading and just disable it if I cannot figure > it out. In that case, read the daily script: It does: sa -s $daily_account_flags which processes the file `acct' in /var/account. If the file cannot be processed, because there's invalid data in there, then it will remain so until the file is removed by hand, because the '-s' option of sa(8) will not truncate on error. How invalid data came to exist in the file, could be disk error or maybe OS upgrade to 7.x and they changed the format drastically? I have no idea. -- Mel Problem with today's modular software: they start with the modules and never get to the software part.