Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261411AbUCIAXl (ORCPT ); Mon, 8 Mar 2004 19:23:41 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261436AbUCIAXl (ORCPT ); Mon, 8 Mar 2004 19:23:41 -0500 Received: from 18-165-237-24-mvl.nwc.gci.net ([24.237.165.18]:9156 "EHLO nevaeh-linux.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261411AbUCIAXj (ORCPT ); Mon, 8 Mar 2004 19:23:39 -0500 Date: Mon, 8 Mar 2004 15:23:44 -0900 (AKST) From: Arthur Corliss X-X-Sender: acorliss@bifrost.nevaeh-linux.org To: Tim Schmielau cc: lkml Subject: Re: [PATCH][RFC] fix BSD accounting (w/ long-term perspective ;-) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1974 Lines: 40 On Tue, 9 Mar 2004, Tim Schmielau wrote: > Comments? The glue for the GNU accounting tools are already on the way, should this be the patch accepted for 2.6. If you would, please provide a similar patch against 2.4 (or I'll do it, which ever is more convenient). Great job on your patch, BTW, I should have snarfed those padding bytes myself, but I wasn't giving as much thought as you did to backwards compatibility. > Any other suggestions for incompatible changes to struct acct in 2.7? Taking a note from the BSD camp, instead of fixing the field size in acct.h why not cast ac_uid/ac_gid as uid_t/gid_t and let the kernel determine the size to log in 2.7 onwards? Yes, this will break binary compatibility for those upgrading older systems with a new stable series kernel. However, this would obviate the need in the future to provide a migration path. Outside of a recompile it would be transparent to the userland tools. For fields working within a well-defined range I don't think we should be second-guessing the kernel, and just use what the kernel dictates. Not doing so means we are acknowledging that we don't care about logging incorrect data. Being the whiny little bitch that I am I'm going to repeat my mantra: we should not be in the business of logging bad data, regardless of how rare we think we might actually do it. Besides which, with your great idea of putting a version field in the struct we can now put some intelligence into the GNU utils to read the different versions of the records in the same file. --Arthur Corliss Bolverk's Lair -- http://arthur.corlissfamily.org/ Digital Mages -- http://www.digitalmages.com/ "Live Free or Die, the Only Way to Live" -- NH State Motto - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/