2.0.7pre2, utmp in particular

[Freddie]

Ok...

Having actually read the rest of the utmp(5) man page, it seems that SYSV 
has no ut_host or ut_addr_v6 (4 bytes used to store the ip) fields. Helpful.

CONFORMING TO
        Linux  utmp entries conform neither to v7/BSD nor to SYSV:
        They are a mix of the two.  v7/BSD has fewer fields;  most
        importantly  it lacks ut_type, which causes native v7/BSD-
        like programs to  display  (for  example)  dead  or  login
        entries.   Further  there  is  no configuration file which
        allocates slots to sessions.   BSD  does  so,  because  it
        lacks  ut_id  fields.   In  Linux  (as in SYSV), the ut_id
        field of a record will never change once it has been  set,
        which  reserves  that slot without needing a configuration
        file.  Clearing ut_id may result in race conditions  lead­
        ing  to  corrupted utmp entries and and potential security
        holes.  Clearing the above  mentioned  fields  by  filling
        them  with  null  bytes is not required by SYSV semantics,
        but it allows to run many programs which assume BSD seman­
        tics  and  which  do  not modify utmp.  Linux uses the BSD
        conventions for line contents, as documented above.

        SYSV only uses the type field to mark them and logs infor­
        mative messages such as e.g. "new time" in the line field.
        UT_UNKNOWN seems to be a Linux  invention.   SYSV  has  no
        ut_host or ut_addr_v6 fields.

I guess we'd have to work out what sort of system we're running under if we 
want to have utmp supported on a largeish number of systems.

Freddie