On Sun, 29 Jun 1997 10:53:09 -0400 David R Nessl said:
>> It  is actually  a very  bad idea  to put  these files  under a  Joe User
>> directory where they can be manipulated  randomly by someone who does not
>> necessarily  understand what  these  files  are for  and  how they  work.
>> LISTSERV assumes  that the files are  not being tampered with  by a third
>> party while it uses them. I'll bet a large sum that the average user will
>> assume that the digest file is  here to be freely edited without worries,
>> that these  weird large unprintable  dbwhatever files are designed  to be
>> removed so you can save disk space, and that the other log files can also
>> be edited freely and without precaution. Then you'll be wondering why you
>> get strange errors in  your LISTSERV log :-) I just  don't see any reason
>> to give users a free run on these files.
>
>That's a valid concern.  So we should leave those small files
>(LISTNAME.dbXXXX) owned by listserv, but change the ownership on the
>really big files, i.e. the LISTNAME.logXXXX files, for charging.


If I could be so bold as to butt in here (with trepidation).  How to
charge for lists is something I've been thinking about since it's not
something we (Texas A&M) currently do, but may start doing sometime
in the future.

I agree with Eric that it is a very bad idea to have the log files (any
of the log files) located in a place where users can tamper with them.
Heck, here, Listserv is on a dedicated machine that user's don't even get
accounts on.  If you want to do chargebacks for disk space it would seem
pretty trivial to have a file which simply has 2 items: the listname and
an identifier of the owner (uid of the system where the owner has an
account perhaps).  Since the archives are usually divided into
directories for each list (eg.  /archives/listname/), the billing
program only has to look at the diskspace used in each directory,
match it to the "listowners" file, and add that charge to the bill for
that user.  All the files can remain to be owned by listserv and
there is no tampering by users.

How do other sites handle chargeback of Listserv services (I suspect
most don't).