Re: wtmp file creation

[richard@uk.geeks.org (Richard Kettlewell)]

Miquel van Smoorenburg writes:

>  I am about to make a maybe incompatible change in the
>boot script. On bootup, a test is performed to see if
>the /var/log/wtmp file is present. If not, it is created. This
>is against standard unix practice; the administrator decides
>if the wtmp file is present or not. If not, nothing will try to
>use it. So creating it by default if it is not there looks like
>a bug. I commented out that test for now.
>
>Should an empty wtmp file be included with the base distribution?
>Or should I prompt the user in the postinst script and just ask?
>(Another confusing question...)

Does anything think that it might be useful for there to be a way for
maintainer scripts to tell if the user has declared themselves to be
an expert and if not choose sensible default answer?

(So in this case the expert might get asked but the novice would just
have wtmp created for them.)

What other packages might benefit from this?

-- 
Richard Kettlewell
http://www.elmail.co.uk/staff/richard/                    richard@uk.geeks.org
             Well, sure, the government lies, and the newspapers lie, but in a
                                        democracy they aren't the same lies...