Overflowing wtmp
Dean Riddlebarger
dean at truevision.com
Thu Jan 24 02:02:31 AEST 1991
In article <92 at tdatirv.UUCP> sarima at tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) writes:
>
>I have found that my wtmp file tends to grow without bound.
>This is annoying. Is there any clean way to trim it, short of the rather
>crude 'cat /dev/null > /etc/wtmp' approach. (I *do* know about cron,
>I just need to know what to put in it).
Noting that your mileage may vary on a Xenix system, our ISC systems all
have a cron script called /etc/cleanup, and this script contains a
very simple line:
> /etc/wtmp
The script runs out of cron every Sunday, which means that wtmp only
gets a week of growth max.
Now, as to cron, the line entry in the root crontab for this cleanup
script is:
17 5 * * 0 /bin/su root -c "/etc/cleanup > /dev/null"
Meaning, "at 5:17 a.m. on every Sunday run the /etc/cleanup script as
root, and send any output on stdout into the bit bucket".
On ISC UNIX the easiest way to set up all of this [assuming that the
/etc/cleanup script had not been shipped with the OS] would be:
[1] cd /tmp
[2] crontab -l >root /* creates a copy of the root crontab file */
[3] add a line like the "17 5 etc." above using your favorite editor
[4] crontab root /* resets cron with the new root file */
[5] create /etc/cleanup, with the "> /etc/wtmp" line and whatever else
you want to do for additional administration
This assumes that you are root while you do this. [You have to be
careful with cron, it seriously looks at your UID in this flavor of
System V. And, for all I know, all flavors...]
Hopefully, someone with more Xenix experience can provide a more detailed
posting on the vagaries, if any, of Xenix cron facilities.
--
<:> Dean Riddlebarger "The bus came by <:>
<:> Truevision, Inc. and I got on, <:>
<:> [317] 841-0332 That's when it <:>
<:> dean at truevision.com uunet!epicb!dean all began." <:>
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