Why is wtmp so big?

[Jonathan Bayer]

rfarris at serene.UUCP (Rick Farris) writes:

>In my never-ending search for disk space, I have discovered
>/etc/wtmp, which is a whopping 4,184,424 bytes long.  Is this normal?

Yes, if you don't shorten it periodictly

>Is this a "log" file, composed of numerous /etc/utmp entries?  Can I
>truncate it by copying /etc/utmp to it?  Can I delete it altogether,
>and let it recreate itself?

If you delete it then it will not be recreated.  You can truncate it by
either copying /etc/utmp to it, or by copying /dev/null to it.



JB
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Jonathan Bayer		Intelligent Software Products, Inc.
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