Complexity of reallocating storage (was users command crap)

[Doug Gwyn]

In article <29778:Feb419:26:3791 at kramden.acf.nyu.edu> brnstnd at kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes:
>Now you bring in the fourth god of ``number of passes.'' Wtf are you
>talking about? The number of passes matters *only* in how it affects
>time, space, and human effort. Lots of examples bear this out.

An /etc/utmp inspector could easily be foiled is it relies on the
contents of /etc/utmp being unchanged between its first and second
passes.  It's bad enough not being able to lock the file for one
pass, but that's probably easier to cope with than a phase error.