Huge /var/log/wtmp

[joost]

I just noticed that I have a /var/log/wtmp file of 32 MB! As far as I know, it only logs reboots and logins, can I safely delete this file to free up some space?

[joost]

..just renamed the file and then deleted it, no problems so far..

[alexxx]

mine is at 139k after ~ 1 month of daily use (but just few reboots).
Do you reboot often?
Anyway, in *nix OSs it is a file that can be safely deleted.

I'm just worried for the non-geeks users, some monthly cron job cleaning it should pre-installed in the 770, because, in the end, it will eventually fill up - whichever the time between your reboots...

alessandro

[joost]

Mine is one week old, 20 reboots perhaps. Maybe the file grows only while using a shell, I don't know. But is was really 32 MB! And now it's already 142kb again.

The bad thing is that you need root access to delete the file, so it could be a time bomb..

[Chainsaw76]

2 weeks. 37M

-jason

[pdafan]

My file was 27MB with a machine that is about two weeks old (counting from my last full re-flash.) Uptime about 3 days at this point.

[Hedgecore]

Is it possible this thing is truncated when space is needed? I copied about 45MB worth of apps/media over to the internal card interrim before putting it on my new 512mb rsmmc and no issues... unless mine is still piddly in size. I'll check when I get home.

[ReinhardE]

Though mine was more than 20 MB, the actual difference when doing df was a bit more than 2 MB - so this file must be easily compressible.

[Supergeek]

From my reading, if you delete the wtmp file, you should restart syslogd.