[Bug 50052] kernel is unmatched with userspace accounting tools

[Ryan Lovett]

Public bug reported:

Binary package hint: linux-image-2.6.12-10-686-smp

With linux-image-2.6.12-9-686-smp, the utilities provided with the acct
package worked fine. With the latter kernel, 'lastcomm' cannot parse the
structure anymore:

$ lastcomm | tail
??                S     root     ??         0.16 secs Wed Dec 31 16:00
??                S     root     ??         0.16 secs Wed Dec 31 16:15
8?                      root     ??         0.16 secs Wed Dec 31 16:15
??                S     root     ??         0.16 secs Wed Dec 31 16:00
??                S     root     ??         0.16 secs Wed Dec 31 16:15
??                      root     ??         0.16 secs Wed Dec 31 16:15
??                 F    root     ??         0.00 secs Wed Dec 31 16:00
??                S     root     ??         0.00 secs Wed Dec 31 16:00
??                      root     ??         0.00 secs Wed Dec 31 16:00
x?                S     root     ??         0.00 secs Wed Dec 31 16:00
$ date
Fri Jun 16 15:18:05 PDT 2006
$ dpkg -l acct | grep acct
ii  acct           6.3.5-39       The GNU Accounting utilities for process and login accounting

I tried stopping accounting, putting an empty pacct file in place, and
restarting it, but the kernel still writes out incongruent data. Since
the acct package hasn't changed, the kernel must now be writing out a
modified structure.

** Affects: linux-source-2.6.12 (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Untriaged
         Status: Unconfirmed

-- 
kernel is unmatched with userspace accounting tools
https://launchpad.net/bugs/50052