Package: x11-common Version: 1:7.5+6 Severity: important Is there any reason why /etc/X11/Xsession appends to the logfile instead of creating it:
exec >>"$ERRFILE" 2>&1 If the argument is that you want to be able to see what errors happened in the last session, so you don't want to clear them out before the user gets to review them, they can always log into the console and review the errors before they restart X. Meanwhile, the non-priveleged user has no opportunity to make sure their .xsession-errors file is emptied when their session starts, because if they empty it unconditionally in their own ~/.xsession file, then they'll lose any error message output before ~/.xsession executes. This is particularly insidious when the disk is full because something was writing lots of crap to ~/.xsession-errors. That crap is not cleared out when the user's session restarts, and so that user can't log in because their Xauthority file can't be modified, should they opt for Xauthority to be created in their home directory (or their desktop manager will get stuck when it tries to read-write-modify its dotfiles). All of this talk for the past 5 years that maybe we should have a mechanism for limiting the size of logfiles is just skirting around the issue. The logfile never shrinks if it is never truncated at X startup! Fix that one line, and the whole issue goes away! Disk full because of too much crap emitted to ~/.xsession-errors? Well, just let the unsophisticated user log out and log back in again. -- System Information: Debian Release: squeeze/sid APT prefers testing APT policy: (500, 'testing'), (500, 'stable') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Kernel: Linux 2.6.32-5-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU cores) Locale: LANG=en_AU.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_AU.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash Versions of packages x11-common depends on: ii debconf [debconf-2.0] 1.5.35 Debian configuration management sy ii debianutils 3.4 Miscellaneous utilities specific t ii lsb-base 3.2-23.1 Linux Standard Base 3.2 init scrip x11-common recommends no packages. x11-common suggests no packages. -- debconf information: x11-common/xwrapper/actual_allowed_users: console x11-common/xwrapper/allowed_users: Console Users Only -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-x-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100912234149.7647.56167.report...@aatpc2.aao.gov.au
