utmp[x]/wtmp[x] logging?

[David Lee]

At our site of potentially 14,000 samba users(*), our management folks
are, quite reasonably(!), wanting to collect samba usage figures.  How? 

Samba currently does connection logging into the "STATUS..LCK" file via
"claim_connection()" etc.  This can be examined by the smbstatus command.

Has any thought being given to supplementing this with utmpx/wtmpx -style
logging on UNIX?

At large sites with an already well-established utmpx/wtmpx accounting
scheme on UNIX, it can be highly desirable to include (either rolled-in or
parallel) similar samba connection information.  Rather than hacking
together post-processing tools for "smbstatus" (which would fail to
include cumulative information), it seems preferable to allow samba to
generate utmpx/wtmpx records. 

It would also allow standard UNIX utilities such as "who" and "last" to
work on samba connections.

I hope the idea is moderately sensible?  If not, why not, please?  I would
be happy to have a go at further investigating such a samba option. 
(Still lots of questions:  should it be a "--with-utmp" option, a smb.conf
option, into the system or separate utmpx/wtmpx files, ...?) 

(*) We have 14,000 registered UNIX users.  At present just a handful are
on samba;  this time next month it will be 4,000;  over the next two years
it will rise to include all 14,000. 

-- 

:  David Lee                                I.T. Service          :
:  Systems Programmer                       Computer Centre       :
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