[Thus spake Vsevolod Stakhov ("VS: ") Yesterday...]

VS: Hi.
VS:
VS: Why can't we use text file for wtmp? wtmp is just a log file, that is
VS: similar to other log files in system. We need to fix only last and ac
VS: programmes and libutil routines to work with text wtmp. I understand,
VS: that analyzing of wtmp records would be more complex, but wtmp would be
VS: in human readable form. And we would not need to trim hostname, because
VS: even in wtmpx the maximum hostname length is 256 bytes, and real max
VS: length is 1024 bytes.

wtmp is a binary file with fixed length records because it makes for much
faster processing.  It's easier, computing-wise to parse a file of records
of fixed size and display them in text format than it would be to parse
a file of records of varying size and deal with them.

We would not gain anything by converting wtmp from fixed-size-record
format to text format.  Humans are not the only things who gain from
reading the information inside wtmp.


				--*greywolf;
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