bin/57089: "w" does not honor the -n option

[Brian Somers]

The following reply was made to PR bin/57089; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Brian Somers <brian at Awfulhak.org>
To: Kirk Strauser <kirk at strauser.com>
Cc: Dima Dorfman <dima at trit.org>, FreeBSD-gnats-submit at FreeBSD.org,
	brian at FreeBSD.org
Subject: Re: bin/57089: "w" does not honor the -n option
Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2003 18:37:41 +0100

 I think this conversation reduces to the requirement for a new utmp format.
 And if we're going that route, we should really look at utmpx.  I don't think
 anyone's done more than look at it though :*/
 
 On Mon, 22 Sep 2003 18:39:18 -0500, Kirk Strauser <kirk at strauser.com> wrote:
 > At 2003-09-22T22:43:00Z, Dima Dorfman <dima at trit.org> writes:
 > 
 > > and it looks like that rationale still applies.
 > 
 > That makes a certain kind of sense, I suppose.
 > 
 > > I've cc'd brian (who made that change) to see whether he has any input on
 > > this.  The issue is: So, you want to see numeric addresses--but for which
 > > family?  If a host resolves to a v4 and v6 address, which one should be
 > > displayed?
 > 
 > Ideally, you'd see the address of the socket that the user is connecting on.
 > For diagnostic purposes, it'd be nice to get a deterministic answer that tty
 > p0 is connecting from 10.0.5.128, and tty p1 is connecting from
 > 2001:470:1f00:546:2a0:c9ff:fe08:260a .
 > 
 > > Perhaps the programs that write to utmp/wtmp should just avoid writing
 > > hostnames?  (although this is just a thought--I haven't tried to think
 > > through the implications of doing something like that)
 > 
 > Well, I could see that it may be useful to have a "snapshot" of what the
 > hostname was at the time the user originally connected - DNS records do
 > change, after all - but is there a good reason not to additionally store the
 > address?
 > -- 
 > Kirk Strauser
 > 
 
 
 -- 
 Brian <brian at Awfulhak.org>                        <brian@[uk.]FreeBSD.org>
       <http://www.Awfulhak.org>                   <brian@[uk.]OpenBSD.org>
 Don't _EVER_ lose your sense of humour !