Subject: Re: utmp file format change
To: Simon Burge <simonb@wasabisystems.com>
From: James Graham <greywolf@starwolf.com>
List: tech-userlevel
Date: 08/22/2001 13:10:30
On Wed, 22 Aug 2001, Simon Burge wrote:

# Jun-ichiro itojun Hagino wrote:
#
# > 	I really would love to see utmp/wtmp file format to be updated before
# > 	1.6, so that it would be able to accomodate full IPv6 numeric address
# > 	as well as longer host names.
# >
# > [ ... ]
# > 	- Solaris uses struct utmpx, instead of utmp.  which does not look very
# > 	  good to me.
# > 	- openbsd bumped UT_xx (file format changed), with no backward
# > 	  compatibility supplied for older log files.
# > [ ... ]
# >
# > 	the approach I like the best is the openbsd one, with a bit of clever
# > 	backward compat code in last(1) and other tools.  any comments?
#
# Binary compatibility is a problem.  Every writer of utmp/wtmp would need
# to be updated at the same time (including any packages - ssh-type and
# xterm-type packages come to mind) other file corruption will be a real
# issue.

So why don't we have utmp/wtmp writing facilities in libc and use those
instead of writing directly?

				--*greywolf;
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