[Pkg-shadow-devel] Bug#265613: What is the purpose of HZ in login.defs?

[Alexander Gattin]

Hi!

On Tue, Jun 07, 2005 at 08:25:02AM +0200, Christian Perrier wrote:
> > Let's ask about HZ on #debian -- maybe there's somebody
> > old enough to remember and not too old to lost all
> > his memories :) about what was this envvar used for in
> > archaic times...
> Can you summarize tous discussion of last night on IRC here?
> 
> We need to decide which comment is to be put in /etc/login.defs to
> deal with this bug report.

In short, we have found no contemporary program that
relies on the HZ environment variable.

I know in old times some did.

P.S. I propose to dig this question further. Otherwise,
the HZ env var seems to be an old relic from times of
SCO Unix, Xenix, etc...

For example (http://osr507doc.sco.com/en/man/html.M/environ.M.html):

 HZ
    Defines, with a numerical value, the number of
    clock interrupts per second.  The value of this
    variable is dependent on the hardware, and
    configured in the file /etc/initscript. If HZ is
    not defined, programs which depend on this hertz
    value, such as prof(CP) and times(S), will not run.

;)

-- 
WBR,
xrgtn