bin/66445: Add options to last(1) to ignore ftp logins (usefull for busy ftp servers) [PATCH]

[Yar Tikhiy]

The following reply was made to PR bin/66445; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Yar Tikhiy <yar at comp.chem.msu.su>
To: Flemming Jacobsen <fj at batmule.dk>
Cc: freebsd-gnats-submit at freebsd.org
Subject: Re: bin/66445: Add options to last(1) to ignore ftp logins (usefull for busy ftp servers) [PATCH]
Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2005 03:56:23 +0300

 On Sat, Jan 08, 2005 at 08:51:18AM +0100, Flemming Jacobsen wrote:
 > Yar Tikhiy wrote:
 > > According to the KISS principle of Unix, one should use such tools
 > > as grep(1) or awk(1) to exclude some lines from last(1) output.
 > > Have you considered that?
 > 
 > This can be seen as violating KISS, yes.
 > And if people want to dump the patch for that reason, i have no
 > complaints. This patch is for convinience, not for critical
 > functionality.
 
 You see, the problem with your patch is violating not KISS itself,
 but the well-established Unix tradition of specialized command-line
 tools.  Filtering ftp login records out isn't a job for last(1).
 
 > As for ftpd -W, it doesn't log regular ftp logins, which is
 > really bad for security.
 > 
 > Maybe a better lolution would be to teach ftpd not to log annon
 > logins to wtmp.
 
 I hope I found a possible solution.
 What do you think about changing the -W switch behaviour so that
 it would turn off logging anonymous and guest FTP logins if specified
 once or turn wtmp logging completely if specified twice on the command
 line?  E.g.,
 
 	ftpd -W # don't log anonymous and guest logins
 	ftpd -WW # don't touch wtmp at all
 
 -- 
 Yar