Date: Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:40:39 +0100 From: Pieter de Goeje <pieter@degoeje.nl> To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Cc: ports@freebsd.org, Ed Schouten <ed@80386.nl>, current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: HEADS UP: <utmp.h> gone. All welcome <utmpx.h>. Message-ID: <201001140040.39973.pieter@degoeje.nl> In-Reply-To: <20100113194254.GR64905@hoeg.nl> References: <20100113194254.GR64905@hoeg.nl>
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On Wednesday 13 January 2010 20:42:54 Ed Schouten wrote: > Hello everyone, > > I just made various commits to FreeBSD HEAD to remove our old user > accounting database interface (see utmp(5)) and replace it by the POSIX > standardized utmpx interface (see getutxent(3)). This means we just got > rid of some annoyances that are as old as the FreeBSD project itself: > > - Hostnames were originally restricted to 16 bytes, which is way too > short for your average hostname generated by your ISP, but also for > IPv6 addresses, which are at most 32 + 7 =3D 39 characters. This is most welcome :-) > > - No support for login sessions not related to TTYs, like ppp(8), > ftpd(8) sessions. > > - No support for multiple login sessions on one TTY, for example > generated by login(1). > > I was not able to give us a smooth transition from utmp towards utmpx, > simply because our utmp implementation offered almost no utility > functions, which means all consumers modify the database files > themselves. This means you should probably recompile any applications > you're interested in that uses the user accounting database. I realize > this may be quite uncomfortable, but we can't always win. > > [ This information is mainly for port maintainers: ] > > I've noticed there is some breakage in ports, but it shouldn't be too > serious. I've seen cases where an application includes <utmp.h>, even > though it doesn't use anything provided by that header. In other cases > they used fields like UT_NAMESIZE to derive the maximum user name length > supported by the system, which is clearly not what this definition was > intended for. I've incremented __FreeBSD_version to 900007 to identify > the import of utmpx. In case a certain port breaks badly, let me know > and I'm willing to take a look at it. > > Be sure to give it a try and report any issues. Thanks! =46rom the commit logs I can tell it was a lot of work on something that ma= ny=20 people wouldn't consider a very glamourous or spectacular piece of FreeBSD. So let me just say: Thanks! Cheers, Pieter de Goeje
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