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Date:      Thu, 19 Apr 2007 11:35:55 +0100 (BST)
From:      Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.org>
To:        Diomidis Spinellis <dds@aueb.gr>
Cc:        arch@FreeBSD.org, re@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Re: Accounting changes
Message-ID:  <20070419113528.X2913@fledge.watson.org>
In-Reply-To: <20070419101815.Y2913@fledge.watson.org>
References:  <461958CC.4040804@aueb.gr> <20070414170218.M76326@fledge.watson.org> <4621E826.6050306@aueb.gr> <20070415105157.J84174@fledge.watson.org> <46231C64.9010707@aueb.gr> <20070419101815.Y2913@fledge.watson.org>

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On Thu, 19 Apr 2007, Robert Watson wrote:

> If we're willing to assume architectures can only read their own accounting 
> files (the status quo), the above argument doesn't really make sense.  You 
> end up with a series of versions of "struct acct", and that code is 
> architecture-neutral.  Thinking about it more, I'm not sure a per file 
> header is even required or desired (as I had previously suggested), simply a 
> per-record versioning scheme, allowing a reboot onto a new kernel to 
> continue to write to the existing accounting data.  Read the first 16 bytes, 
> if the first byte is non-0 then it's the original "struct acct" layout, and 
> otherwise the second byte is the version number to use.  Or in the interests 
> of forward compatibility, include a length parameter in another 16 bytes so 
> you can skip over records if necessary in order to allow the kernel to move 
> back and forward across file versions if there's a problem after the 
> upgrade.

s/16 bytes/16 bits/ was intended in the above. :-)

Robert N M Watson
Computer Laboratory
University of Cambridge



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