lastlog is huge

[Paul Howarth]

david smethurst wrote:
> hi all 
> ive been trying to ghost over my drives from 160gb to a  36gb and
> couldnt figure out why it keep saying that the destination drive was too
> small.
> then i found this:
> in /var/log/lastlog is 1168.0GB
> its locked of course but please what can i do about this and why is it
> so big?
> the drive is not big enough for the size so something else is wrong
> question? how can i tell how big everything is?
> i tried to use the file size view in konqueror and it just keeps locking
> up all the time so that i cant use it anymore and go to the home
> directory

/var/log/lastlog is a sparse file. See 
http://publibn.boulder.ibm.com/doc_link/en_US/a_doc_lib/aixbman/admnconc/sparse_files_under.htm 
for an explanation of sparse files.

# du -k /var/log/lastlog
will tell you how many kilobytes it's actually taking up on disk.

Paul.