On 1 Oct 1999, Johan Danielsson wrote:

> > For example the IP address string:
> > 
> >   123.123.123.123
> >   
> > requires 15 characters, plus one extra character for the null terminator
> > so 16 characters seems to make sense...
> 
> I think it's (16) just an arbitratry number. The utmp fields are not
> zero terminated.

Ok, so let's assume that this is an arbitratry number for a moment... 
If a system is using IPv6 then this field is not going to be big enough
to store the IPv6 address. Therefore it seems to make sense that the
value for the ut_host field be increased now before 1.5 comes out.

I think one can argue that if this is done it may break some programs
that are expecting the field to be 16 characters in length but if I
understand things correctly, 1.5 will be using the ELF format and 
everyone using programs in the A.OUT format will have to recompile 
their programs anyway (right?).

Brian

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