lastlog is bloody EEUUGE ... heh.
 

I'm curious why /var/log/lastlog is taking up 25mbs of disk space, when using the lastlog program, it basically only has a teeny weeny bit of data to present?

Its binary as well... which is crazy why its so huge.

This normal behavior? Man pages said nothing in respect to the size of the file or how to reduce it.

sometimes you have some devices droping trash into wtmp or lastlog, and they can get big (500Mb+), and it's hard to change anything but getting newest device drivers

Craazzzy, thanks for the heads up. I will keep an eye on it.

I would think RH 7.3 be more up to date than say, YDL2.1 (the RH machine is the one with the larger file).

Rotate lastlog
 

I was able to just now run the following commands, and have it rotate the lastlog file.


ps -ef | grep syslog
mv lastlog lastlog.old ; touch lastlog ; kill -9 <syslogd pid>; syslogd -m 0


If you run "lastlog" right away, nothing is returned. I walked back to the box and logged into the console, then ran lastlog, my login showed up. File size is now 292 bytes instead of 20 megs.

Yay!