Package: uptimed
Version: 1:0.3.12-2
Severity: important
Apparently, uptimed is not updating its /var/spool/uptimed/records file
in a safe way: after a system crash, I have seen on many occasions fsck
clearing the corresponding inode and loosing all the uptime records.
The update procedure should be something like:
rename /var/spool/uptimed/records as /var/spool/uptimed/records.old
write new data to /var/spool/uptimed/records.new
fsync()
rename /var/spool/uptimed/records.new as /var/spool/uptimed/records
unlink /var/spool/uptimed/records.old
And upon startup, if a /var/spool/uptimed/records.old file is present
it should be used as the main database because it means the above procedure
was somehow interrupted by a crash.
To minimise disruption, I've increased the frequency of database savings
to 600 seconds on my systems. Note that my machines do not crash frequently
but when they do, it is usually because one of the IDE disks loses an interrupt
and linux then hangs, requiring a reboot (the software watchdog is of no help
here, hangup seems to be at the kernel level).
I'm flagging this bug as "important" because it is somehow defeating the
purpose of having a tool record uptimes if a sudden crash causes years of
history to get trashed. (Data is not valuable enough to go through a tape
restore).
-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
APT prefers unstable
APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.25.4 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=fr_FR, LC_CTYPE=fr_FR (charmap=ISO-8859-1)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Versions of packages uptimed depends on:
ii debconf [debconf-2.0] 1.5.22 Debian configuration management sy
ii libc6 2.7-2 GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii libuptimed0 1:0.3.11-1+b1 Library for uptimed
uptimed recommends no packages.
-- debconf information:
* uptimed/mail/do_mail: Both
* uptimed/mail/address: root
* uptimed/mail/milestones_info:
* uptimed/maxrecords: 50
* uptimed/interval: 600
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