Re: Incredibly huge /var/log/lastlog
On Tue, 17 Feb 1998, Miquel van Smoorenburg wrote:
> According to Marcus Brinkmann:
> > Would someone mind to explain me and the others what fixed seize files are
>
> Who mentioned fixed size files?
I guess I did in my first post. After reading your susequent posts, I
think that I should explain. Warning, I did not completely grasp your
explanation but I think I got the jist of it (this will show in the
wording I use). lastlog is an ordered file that saves last information for
each user's offset (?) at a particular location, where that location is
determined by the offset. If only a few users login and their offset's are
close together, then lastlog is a relatively smaall file. However, if a
user logs in with an offset vastly different, then lastlog becomes a huge
file as reported by ls as it stored this offset at some "distance" from
the others and therefore creates a file with a large amount of empty
space. I think the idea that lastlog is fixed is that if there is a
maximum offset a user can have, then after this offset is logged, the file
will always be that size.
Is this way off?
Cheers, Colin.
--
Colin Telmer, Kingston, Ontario, Canada
<mailto:telmerco@qed.econ.queensu.ca>
<http://terrapin.econ.queensu.ca>
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