/var/adm/wtmp ... what does it do ?

[TSch]

Hi folks,

I was wondering...

What's the function of the file

/var/adm/wtmp ?

It's been growing quite large by now and I'd like to delete the content ...

Is it safe to do so or will this interrupt some vital functions of our system (AIX 4.3.3 by the way) ?

Thanks in advance !

Regards
Thomas

 

[DSMARWAY]

hi,

wtmp holds information about user & accounting information
when you run commands like, last,who , write , login

you can trim this file using the fwtmp utility
do man fwtmp

basically , you convert this binary file to ascii , then trim the file e.g. tail -500 filename > newfile
then convert the file back

This is entry in man page of fwtmp

/usr/sbin/acct/fwtmp < /var/adm/wtmp > dummy.file
then trim dummy.file which is ascii format

write back dummy file to binary format
/usr/sbin/acct/fwtmp -ic < dummy.file > /var/adm/wtmp

fwtmp is part of bos.acct fileset

hth