> > while going through my wtmp with last(1) I noticed there could be a better > > way than always gunzip'ing wtmp files and then using last -f. I've made > > a patch for your consideration that does the following: > > b) it writes the gzipped file to a /tmp location uncompressed so that the > > normal way of operation can be done on the tmp file. > > Having tried to do things like gzcat /var/log/wtmp.0.gz | last -f /dev/stdin > before, I'd certainly find it useful and this is less intrusive than modifying > last(8) so it could work with standard input.
Unless you run an extermely large shop like Beck does, or have extremely tiny disks, why not just remove all the Z flags from newsyslog.conf? This has the side effect of not having to gunzip /var/log/daemon* & friends. I guess we inherited this log gzipping from 4BSD, but in those days a 300MB disk cost a month's salary. Plus another week's salary or so for the trucking charges.
