Jason McIntyre <j...@kerhand.co.uk> wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 30, 2020 at 04:24:43PM +0100, Solene Rapenne wrote:
> > reading accton(8) it's not clear that if you
> > enable it you need to restart the system for
> > accounting to be effective.
> >
> > Here is a change to add the explanation, but
> > I'm not sure if the wording is correct.
> >
>
> hi. i think the text that follows is really trying to say the same thing
> (you enable it at boot, so until you boot it isn;t enabled). we could
> just try to make that one bit of text a bit clearer:
>
> .Nm
> should be enabled at boot time, either by running
> .Dq rcctl enable accounting
> or by setting
> .Dq accounting=YES
> in
> .Xr rc.conf.local 8 .
With a careful reading of the current manual page, everything is there
and it is accurate.
With an argument naming an existing file
^^^^^^^^
Ok so let's create it with touch. Probably has wrong permissions.
But now accton to that file works. Or enable it and reboot, and now
disable it and reboot, and the file still exists, so now accton works
because it is an existing file (with the right permissions I guess).
So it *IS* working as documented. It is just a bit weird, because the
accton command (and system call) do not create the file.
My problem with these changes is this is the man page for the accton(8)
command, it documents *the binary*. The manpage has already been subverted
talk about rcctl, and about how /etc/rc runs the command. But the man
page should first and foremost be about the command, not about /etc/rc
and rcctl, am i not right? For instance, the ntpd manual page has a tiny
section about rc.conf.
So in conclusion, I think both of you are writing text about the startup
subsystem, into the wrong manual page. I think both proposals are skewed.
So questions.
1 - historically it requires a file to be pre-created. In the rc scripts,
this is a touch. That grabs the umask and ownership of root's run of
/etc/rc.
2 - could we do better, in some way?
3 - accton system call does not have a umask, is that where this design came
from?
4 - could we improve upon this?
5 - could accton always (attempt to) create the file, without harming existing
use cases, with proper owner and chmod flags?
6 - or should that be tied to a flag, making it easier to document?
> sth like that?
> jmc
>
> > Index: accton.8
> > ===================================================================
> > RCS file: /home/reposync/src/usr.sbin/accton/accton.8,v
> > retrieving revision 1.11
> > diff -u -p -r1.11 accton.8
> > --- accton.8 10 Nov 2019 20:51:53 -0000 1.11
> > +++ accton.8 30 Oct 2020 15:22:14 -0000
> > @@ -43,6 +43,10 @@ causes system accounting information for
> > to be placed at the end of the file.
> > If no argument is given, accounting is turned off.
> > .Pp
> > +Accounting is done if it was enabled when system booted.
> > +If you activate accounting, a reboot is required for it to become
> > +effective.
> > +.Pp
> > To have
> > .Nm
> > enabled at boot time, use
> >
>
