From owner-freebsd-current Sat Dec 7 10:23:44 1996 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.4/8.8.4) id KAA03405 for current-outgoing; Sat, 7 Dec 1996 10:23:44 -0800 (PST) Received: from irz301.inf.tu-dresden.de (irz301.inf.tu-dresden.de [141.76.1.11]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.4/8.8.4) with SMTP id KAA03386 for ; Sat, 7 Dec 1996 10:23:39 -0800 (PST) Received: from sax.sax.de (sax.sax.de [193.175.26.33]) by irz301.inf.tu-dresden.de (8.6.12/8.6.12-s1) with ESMTP id TAA14477 for ; Sat, 7 Dec 1996 19:23:30 +0100 Received: (from uucp@localhost) by sax.sax.de (8.6.12/8.6.12-s1) with UUCP id TAA20271 for freebsd-current@FreeBSD.org; Sat, 7 Dec 1996 19:23:30 +0100 Received: (from j@localhost) by uriah.heep.sax.de (8.8.2/8.6.9) id TAA21282 for freebsd-current@FreeBSD.org; Sat, 7 Dec 1996 19:09:07 +0100 (MET) From: J Wunsch Message-Id: <199612071809.TAA21282@uriah.heep.sax.de> Subject: Re: cvs commit: src/include utmp.h To: freebsd-current@FreeBSD.org (FreeBSD-current users) Date: Sat, 7 Dec 1996 19:09:07 +0100 (MET) Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch) In-Reply-To: from "[?KOI8-R?]" at "Dec 7, 96 07:00:24 pm" X-Phone: +49-351-2012 669 X-PGP-Fingerprint: DC 47 E6 E4 FF A6 E9 8F 93 21 E0 7D F9 12 D6 4E X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL17 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-current@FreeBSD.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk As [?KOI8-R?] wrote: > > Alternatively, we could teach last(1) to handle both cases, based on > > some heuristics. (Haven't tried, but i assume that's also possible.) > > Oh please no! It is more easy to say "cp /dev/null /var/log/utmp" > once than bloat each and every program (last, w, who, finger, etc.) > with code which handle obsolete case. You've missed my point. Recreating utmp is out of the question, and is already performed at the next reboot. The problem is _wtmp_. Requiring people to throw it away will upset quite a lot of them (including me). In particular users like ISPs certainly will beat at us if they don't have a migration path to track previous logins. (I think sax.de maintains wtmp files for at least one year back. More `serious' ISPs will probably archive them even longer.) (The same applies to /var/log/lastlog, i assume.) -- cheers, J"org joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)