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Date:      Mon, 13 Nov 2000 15:56:36 -0600
From:      Tim <tim@futuresouth.com>
To:        cjclark@alum.mit.edu
Cc:        freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: periodic and 310.accounting
Message-ID:  <20001113155636.I10482@futuresouth.com>
In-Reply-To: <20001112145648.R75251@149.211.6.64.reflexcom.com>; from cjclark@reflexnet.net on Sun, Nov 12, 2000 at 02:56:48PM -0800
References:  <20001112075532.A7158@futuresouth.com> <20001112134724.O75251@149.211.6.64.reflexcom.com> <20001112161350.A8992@futuresouth.com> <20001112145648.R75251@149.211.6.64.reflexcom.com>

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On Sun, Nov 12, 2000 at 02:56:48PM -0800, Crist J . Clark wrote:
> To view the information in the accounting files I have always used
> sa(8). You can get all of the same info out of the raw files as you
> can from the summary ones as far as sa(8) is concerned... I think.
>
> > I was looking
> > for the login times of a particular user and I believe I need the raw log
> > files for that.
> 
> That information is not even from the /var/account files, that's in
> utmp and wtmp. That information is already archived by newsyslog which
> by default keeps three _months_ of old records (it used to keep a
> year's worth). See last(1).

  I am sorry, I should know better than post without thinking first.  I
was looking for the times/dates that each command was executed.  I think
that's in the raw files only.

> >   It looks to me there is a small race condition with the 310.accounting
> > script.
> > 
> >     cp -pf acct acct.0 || rc=3
> >     sa -s >/dev/null || rc=3
> > 
> >   wouldn't commands logged between the two statements be lost?
> 
> Yes and no. No commands will be lost to the summary files (which is
> what is considered to be important), but there may be commands that
> are lost between the acct.0 file and the new acct files.

  Ok, I might still be confused here, but I personally don't care much
about the summary files but am interested more in the raw files,
specifically time/date each command was executed.

> > I can't
> > think of a way to work around this though.  Or is there some special
> > system magic that I am missing?
> 
> Notice that the 'acct' is never actually removed explicitly in the
> script. the sa(8) command truncates the acct file after reading in its
> information, so nothing is lost in the summary files.

  Right, but we definitely could lose information in the acct.* archives.

  Tim


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