Re: wtmp management (Re: Slight Multiplicity)

[mitchell@mdd.comm.mot.com (Bill Mitchell)]

>  chris@cosy.sbg.ac.at (Christian Linhart) wrote:
> [...]
> : "It" here refers to /var/adm/wtmp. What I mean is checking the size of wtmp
> : and clearing it out should happen through crontab not rc.M. It would work
> : fine in rc.M if you wanted to reboot your machine every day -- I don't --,
> : but if your system is up for two years without a crash :) you would have to
> : do the pruning yourself. My vote goes to wtmp management in crontab only.
> 
> Just a side note: 
> I think that before deleting wtmp at least the output of last should
> be mailed to the operator. Especially on an internet connected machine I
> consider it harmful to loose the contents of wtmp if you wanna 
> track down problems that might be caused by a naughty user.

I'd say the debian distribution should

  assume a plain-vanilla sysadmin strategy on the part of the user,
  (I'd suggest assuming a standalone non-networked home system with modem)

  document that assumption clearly

  set up all the sysadmin stuff to some reasonable value consistant with
  that assumption

  where useful, provide information on alternative settings in comments
  located in the various files

I'd say choosing a sysadmin strategy is properly the responsibility of the
system operator, not the responsibility of the debian distribution maintainer

Along this line, let me register a grumble about a passwd program which
requires choice of passwords which are overcomplicated for my system's
usage situation.