Re: db(3) removal and lastlogx

[Alistair Crooks <agc%pkgsrc.org@localhost>]

On Fri, Jul 13, 2012 at 06:35:27AM +0200, Alistair Crooks wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 01:44:57PM +0200, Joerg Sonnenberger wrote:
> > On Sat, Jun 09, 2012 at 08:44:54AM +0200, Martin Husemann wrote:
> > > I missed the start of this thread and have a stupid question: why are we
> > > trying to get rid of db(3) in libc?
> > 
> > Because as far as database implementation goes, it is extremely flawed.
> > The biggest issue is that every program using db(3) in a read-write
> > environment has to deal with inconsistent data, if the system might have
> > crashed during a change cycle. I'm not even talking about transactional
> > integrity, but just plain old "random output".
> 
> We've been using db for this for almost 20 years, I fail to see why
> it's just become a problem just recently.
>  
> > Using db(3) as constant database is inefficient as best. It comes with
> > both a significant overhead in terms of database size and CPU cycles.
> 
> And yet disk space is not quite as stretched as it once was, and CPUs
> are way more powerful than they used to be.  Even tier 3 platforms, or
> those from 20 years ago, could perform db queries efficiently.  So
> these aren't real issues.
> 
> All in all, I'm still trying to find out what problem you're trying to
> solve.
> 
> It would be a non-issue if a db-wrapper for the cdb was used.  Then we
> would not be worrying about modifying source code needlessly.
> 
> Regards,
> Alistair

Well, in lieu of any supporting arguments for the migration of db to cdb
format, let's revert them all.

Especially in view of the fact that marking terminfo.db 'obsolete' has
broken backwards compatibility for standalone-tcsh, to name but one.

Regards,
Alistair