/var/log/wtmp and /var/log/system/log.*

[Peter Leftwich]

Apparently there was a power outage in my area of San Diego this morning
sometime between 8:56 AM (the last time that gaim (multi-userID chat
program) logged a sign on or sign off) and 11:25 AM (when I got out of bed).

I'm wondering why FreeBSD (and in general, all Unix flavors), don't do this:

  * Every minute, on the minute, "touch /var/log/system/log.`date +%m%d%y`"

That way, whether a user is logged in or not, and a system gets rebooted or
shutdown (hard), the sysadmin can supplement /var/log/wtmp with accurate
information and thus reconstruct what the uptime would have been for that
"power-on session."  Can someone comment on what to use for the "at"
command command-line, and whether I'd put this in
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/SOMETHING.sh or where?  I think this is an interesting
omission from Unixes in general.  What's your opinion?

--
Peter Leftwich
President & Founder, Video2Video Services
Box 13692, La Jolla, CA, 92039 USA
http://Www.Video2Video.Com