Warning: `//root/.bash_history' file size is zero

[Geoff Thurman <gtlinux@btinternet.com>]

Hello,

I'm running sarge.

I rebooted this morning and root's bash history disappeared. I have a mail from a chkrootkit run by cron just before the reboot, and this doesn't flag it up, but a manual chkrootkit run just after the reboot did - that's how I discovered it. I can't see anything suspicious in syslog, but frankly I don't really understand syslogs. I've just compared the latest one with earlier ones and can't see anything that looks different. The loginlog doesn't seem suspicious either.

I ran the reboot from my normal user account, but I did have a terminal up with an open su at the time. I don't know whether this is relevant.

Googling, I see several messages where a reboot has led to the bash history disappearing, but nobody ever saying that this is just something that happens from time to time.  When  bash histories come up against their size limits, are they trimmed back, or are they zeroed? And am I right in assuming that I
 have nothing to worry about? Is there anything else I need to look at or tell you?

I'm mailing this list rather than the chkrootkit one because I don't see it as a chkrootkit issue, but rather as a bash history one.

Thanks for any help,

Geoff