ls -alni /var/mail

[Andrew Stribblehill]

Using the trial internal entropy gathering routines Damien so
kindly provided, I noticed stuff happening slowly. I think I've
traced this to the 'ls -alni /var/mail' taking a long time.

Given that this is likely to hurt a few sites similar to mine
(large number of users with an NFS-mounted /var/mail directory) is
it sensible to put a configure option in to disable this part?

I attach a patch to do this. It adds a configure option,
--without-lsmail. I'm not terribly happy with its name and I
haven't patched any of the docs.

Thanks,

Andrew Stribblehill
Systems Programmer, IT Service, University of Durham, England.
-------------- next part --------------
diff --exclude=configure --exclude=config.h.in -c openssh-1.2.3test2/acconfig.h openssh-1.2.3test2+/acconfig.h
*** openssh-1.2.3test2/acconfig.h	Mon Apr  3 05:50:44 2000
--- openssh-1.2.3test2+/acconfig.h	Mon Apr 10 14:09:51 2000
***************
*** 135,140 ****
--- 135,143 ----
  /* Specify default $PATH */
  #undef USER_PATH
  
+ /* Define if you want to supress listing of mail dir for entropy gathering */
+ #undef DISABLE_LSMAIL
+ 
  /* Specify location of ssh.pid */
  #undef PIDDIR
  
diff --exclude=configure --exclude=config.h.in -c openssh-1.2.3test2/configure.in openssh-1.2.3test2+/configure.in
*** openssh-1.2.3test2/configure.in	Mon Apr  3 06:57:06 2000
--- openssh-1.2.3test2+/configure.in	Mon Apr 10 12:14:29 2000
***************
*** 833,838 ****
--- 833,849 ----
  	]
  )
  
+ # Whether to supress listing /var/(spool/)?mail for entropy gathering
+ AC_ARG_WITH(lsmail,
+ 	[  --without-lsmail        Supress ls of mail dir ],
+ 	[
+ 		if test "x$withval" = "xno" ; then
+ 			no_lsmail=1
+ 			AC_DEFINE(DISABLE_LSMAIL)
+ 		fi
+ 	]
+ )
+ 
  # Whether to force IPv4 by default (needed on broken glibc Linux)
  AC_ARG_WITH(ipv4-default,
  	[  --with-ipv4-default     Use IPv4 by connections unless '-6' specified],
Common subdirectories: openssh-1.2.3test2/contrib and openssh-1.2.3test2+/contrib
diff --exclude=configure --exclude=config.h.in -c openssh-1.2.3test2/entropy.c openssh-1.2.3test2+/entropy.c
*** openssh-1.2.3test2/entropy.c	Mon Apr  3 06:07:32 2000
--- openssh-1.2.3test2+/entropy.c	Mon Apr 10 12:15:37 2000
***************
*** 140,147 ****
--- 140,149 ----
  #ifdef PROG_LS
  	{ 0.002, PROG_LS,       { "ls", "-alni", "/var/log", NULL } },
  	{ 0.002, PROG_LS,       { "ls", "-alni", "/var/adm", NULL } },
+ #ifndef DISABLE_LSMAIL
  	{ 0.002, PROG_LS,       { "ls", "-alni", "/var/mail", NULL } },
  	{ 0.002, PROG_LS,       { "ls", "-alni", "/var/spool/mail", NULL } },
+ #endif        
  	{ 0.002, PROG_LS,       { "ls", "-alni", "/proc", NULL } },
  	{ 0.002, PROG_LS,       { "ls", "-alni", "/tmp", NULL } },
  #endif