Re: [maemo-developers] Zapped wtmp...
Hi, We have a 'temp reaper' daemon for deleting some temporary files that have not been used for some time (e.g. temporary E-mail attachments): https://stage.maemo.org/svn/maemo/projects/haf/trunk/osso-af-utils/src/temp-reaper.c It only seems to clear '/var/tmp' currently. I don't know why we have missed the wtmp file... A skilled do-it-yourself man could add '/var/log' there, recompile, and replace the binary. It should work if wtmp is not touched too often and it's not kept open by any program. BR; Kimmo On Wed, 2006-04-12 at 17:34, ext Nils Faerber wrote: Hi! I thought I should let you know... I am not sure if I really found any cure to anything but after the latest discussions about the size of wtmp I checked mine on the 770 and found a more than 200MB file! After gzip'ping it it shrank to just 5MB because it contains almost only 0s. But there must be the information for 200MB stored somewhere in the JFFS2 so I guess that even if it only has 5MB as a comporessed file the impact on a JFFS2 can be much worse. So I enabled the RD mode, became root and linked /var/log/wtmp to /dev/null (who cares for this wtmp on the 770 anyway?). Before I did this I saw more and more weird phenomena on the device, like crashing browser and spurious power-offs when case closed (almost 100% battery, closed device one night, next morning it was powered off and had to be rebooted!). Now after I zapped wtmp I have the feeling (!) that it behaves much better again! I can browse pages that before did not work and I hope that the power-downs are history now too (for the last three days they are but you never know). Maybe someone else likes to try to this too and report his/her experience here. Probably wtmp should be linked to /dev/null in the next software release too. BTW: With every closure of the case the wtmp grows by about 3kB. You can estimate with your usage how big it will get... Cheers nils faerber ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [maemo-developers] Zapped wtmp...
On 4/13/06, Kimmo Hämäläinen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, We have a 'temp reaper' daemon for deleting some temporary files that have not been used for some time (e.g. temporary E-mail attachments): https://stage.maemo.org/svn/maemo/projects/haf/trunk/osso-af-utils/src/temp-reaper.c It only seems to clear '/var/tmp' currently. I don't know why we have missed the wtmp file... Is there any possible downside to deleting wtmp? Mine is over 200mb now ... Jonathan -- Don't anthropomorphize computers. They don't like it. ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [maemo-developers] Zapped wtmp...
Kimmo Hämäläinen schrieb: Hi, Hi! We have a 'temp reaper' daemon for deleting some temporary files that have not been used for some time (e.g. temporary E-mail attachments): https://stage.maemo.org/svn/maemo/projects/haf/trunk/osso-af-utils/src/temp-reaper.c Interesting... It only seems to clear '/var/tmp' currently. I don't know why we have missed the wtmp file... Interestingly an older firmware image (W48-someting) did not write a wtmp! Just checked on another not yet updated device. So this must have been intriduced somewhere between W48 and W52. A skilled do-it-yourself man could add '/var/log' there, recompile, and replace the binary. It should work if wtmp is not touched too often and it's not kept open by any program. I guess this would not work since wtmp is written to with every close of the 770 case (for whatever reason). so it will be modified too often - at least in my case since I open the 770 at least once to 10 times a day. BR; Kimmo Cheers nils On Wed, 2006-04-12 at 17:34, ext Nils Faerber wrote: Hi! I thought I should let you know... I am not sure if I really found any cure to anything but after the latest discussions about the size of wtmp I checked mine on the 770 and found a more than 200MB file! After gzip'ping it it shrank to just 5MB because it contains almost only 0s. But there must be the information for 200MB stored somewhere in the JFFS2 so I guess that even if it only has 5MB as a comporessed file the impact on a JFFS2 can be much worse. So I enabled the RD mode, became root and linked /var/log/wtmp to /dev/null (who cares for this wtmp on the 770 anyway?). Before I did this I saw more and more weird phenomena on the device, like crashing browser and spurious power-offs when case closed (almost 100% battery, closed device one night, next morning it was powered off and had to be rebooted!). Now after I zapped wtmp I have the feeling (!) that it behaves much better again! I can browse pages that before did not work and I hope that the power-downs are history now too (for the last three days they are but you never know). Maybe someone else likes to try to this too and report his/her experience here. Probably wtmp should be linked to /dev/null in the next software release too. BTW: With every closure of the case the wtmp grows by about 3kB. You can estimate with your usage how big it will get... Cheers nils faerber -- kernel concepts Tel: +49-271-771091-12 Dreisbachstr. 24 Fax: +49-271-771091-19 D-57250 Netphen Mob: +49-176-21024535 -- ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [maemo-developers] Zapped wtmp...
Jonathan Matthews-Levine schrieb: On 4/13/06, Kimmo Hämäläinen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We have a 'temp reaper' daemon for deleting some temporary files that have not been used for some time (e.g. temporary E-mail attachments): https://stage.maemo.org/svn/maemo/projects/haf/trunk/osso-af-utils/src/temp-reaper.c It only seems to clear '/var/tmp' currently. I don't know why we have missed the wtmp file... Is there any possible downside to deleting wtmp? Mine is over 200mb now ... Not that I knew of. I have mine linked to /dev/null for several days now and everything seems very normal (even more normal than before ;) And as I just found out (posted in other post) older software releases, namely W48 and probably before, did not write a wtmp. So I guess this is simpl a configuration bug in the latest software version. Jonathan Cheers nils faerber -- kernel concepts Tel: +49-271-771091-12 Dreisbachstr. 24 Fax: +49-271-771091-19 D-57250 Netphen Mob: +49-176-21024535 -- ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [maemo-developers] Zapped wtmp...
On 4/13/06, Nils Faerber [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Interestingly an older firmware image (W48-someting) did not write a wtmp! Just checked on another not yet updated device. So this must have been intriduced somewhere between W48 and W52. My W42 device has not yet been reflashed and has a wtmp file, but only 430KB - it's never been cleared down, AFAIK. Cheers, Andrew -- Andrew Flegg -- mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.bleb.org/ ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [maemo-developers] Zapped wtmp...
I don't know about JFFS2 but back in the old days before Linux yuo could be pretty sure that a Unix filesystem didn't waste space storing null bytes. Wtmp and other system files (databases?) take advantage of this. Now you've made me aware of this I've deleted /var/log/wtmp. I doubt it was using as much storage as you suggest but if I'd really been thinking I'd have done a df before and after - maybe someone else will. There's no need to link it to anything. If the file isn't there, then logging is turned off - at least that's what should happen. Michael - Original Message - From: Nils Faerber [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: maemo-developers@maemo.org Sent: Wednesday, April 12, 2006 3:34 PM Subject: [maemo-developers] Zapped wtmp... Hi! I thought I should let you know... I am not sure if I really found any cure to anything but after the latest discussions about the size of wtmp I checked mine on the 770 and found a more than 200MB file! After gzip'ping it it shrank to just 5MB because it contains almost only 0s. But there must be the information for 200MB stored somewhere in the JFFS2 so I guess that even if it only has 5MB as a comporessed file the impact on a JFFS2 can be much worse. So I enabled the RD mode, became root and linked /var/log/wtmp to /dev/null (who cares for this wtmp on the 770 anyway?). Before I did this I saw more and more weird phenomena on the device, like crashing browser and spurious power-offs when case closed (almost 100% battery, closed device one night, next morning it was powered off and had to be rebooted!). Now after I zapped wtmp I have the feeling (!) that it behaves much better again! I can browse pages that before did not work and I hope that the power-downs are history now too (for the last three days they are but you never know). Maybe someone else likes to try to this too and report his/her experience here. Probably wtmp should be linked to /dev/null in the next software release too. BTW: With every closure of the case the wtmp grows by about 3kB. You can estimate with your usage how big it will get... Cheers nils faerber -- kernel concepts Tel: +49-271-771091-12 Dreisbachstr. 24 Fax: +49-271-771091-19 D-57250 Netphen Mob: +49-176-21024535 -- ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [maemo-developers] Zapped wtmp...
Michael Saunby wrote: I don't know about JFFS2 but back in the old days before Linux yuo could be pretty sure that a Unix filesystem didn't waste space storing null bytes. Wtmp and other system files (databases?) take advantage of this. Now you've made me aware of this I've deleted /var/log/wtmp. I doubt it was using as much storage as you suggest but if I'd really been thinking I'd have done a df before and after - maybe someone else will. There's no need to link it to anything. If the file isn't there, then logging is turned off - at least that's what should happen. Wrong, this just deletes everything that is stored prior to this. And no, what you assume is wrong. Of course the log files should be erasable, and if user deletes the log file, then the system should just start making a new one. Creating the log file if it's not there is the right thing. and turning off the logging should be done via config file. And, my wtmp file was 96.5MB, will be posting if the linking helped anything. And yes, i have too found that the system is more sluggish than in the beginning of use. Even enabling swap-space on the mmc dont have any help anymore. ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [maemo-developers] Zapped wtmp...
There's no need to link it to anything. If the file isn't there, then logging is turned off - at least that's what should happen. Wrong, this just deletes everything that is stored prior to this. And no, what you assume is wrong. Of course the log files should be erasable, and if user deletes the log file, then the system should just start making a new one. Without addressing the question of what the behavior should be, man wtmp on my FC4 system states that logging is disabled if wtmp doesn't exist: wtmp is maintained by login(1), init(1), and some versions of getty(1). Neither of these programs creates the file, so if it is removed, record-keeping is turned off. If you've confirmed that the 770 handles things differently, that's useful information. Your tone is somewhat excessive, though, especially considering that Michael Saunby's claim is supported by at least some related documentation. Mike ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [maemo-developers] Zapped wtmp...
Michael P. Lococo wrote: There's no need to link it to anything. If the file isn't there, then logging is turned off - at least that's what should happen. Wrong, this just deletes everything that is stored prior to this. And no, what you assume is wrong. Of course the log files should be erasable, and if user deletes the log file, then the system should just start making a new one. Without addressing the question of what the behavior should be, man wtmp on my FC4 system states that logging is disabled if wtmp doesn't exist: wtmp is maintained by login(1), init(1), and some versions of getty(1). Neither of these programs creates the file, so if it is removed, record-keeping is turned off. If you've confirmed that the 770 handles things differently, that's useful information. Your tone is somewhat excessive, though, especially considering that Michael Saunby's claim is supported by at least some related documentation. Mike Sorry if it feels like that, it wasn't meant to be like that. But, yes, the wtmp is created after it is removed. ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
