topic Re: Managing /var/adm/wtmp in Operating System - HP-UX

Managing /var/adm/wtmp

Patrick Bridwell — Thu, 24 Aug 2000 13:46:33 GMT

What's the best way to delete records from /var/adm/wtmp? I know I can delete the whole file but I want to keep about a month of data and purge the rest.

Re: Managing /var/adm/wtmp

Alex Glennie — Thu, 24 Aug 2000 13:48:55 GMT

cat /dev/null > /var/adm/wtmp

Re: Managing /var/adm/wtmp

Alex Glennie — Thu, 24 Aug 2000 13:50:17 GMT

Note that zeroing /var/adm/wtmp on a running
system may cause errors to be reported from the who command. These errors
are caused by who not finding the users currently logged in. The best way to
trim /var/adm/wtmp is to do it in single user mode. Do not zero the
/etc/utmp...this is done automatically

Re: Managing /var/adm/wtmp

melvyn burnard — Thu, 24 Aug 2000 13:50:47 GMT

I think the fwtmp command may be the one to use here
do man fwtmp

Re: Managing /var/adm/wtmp

Rick Garland — Thu, 24 Aug 2000 13:53:08 GMT

Using SAM; Routine Tasks - can trim the file to the recommended size.

Re: Managing /var/adm/wtmp

Patrick Bridwell — Thu, 24 Aug 2000 13:59:43 GMT

SAM, to my knowledge, does not allow trimming of binary files.

Assigning /dev/null to the file would wipe out the whole file...I want to keep a months worth of data.

I read the man page on fwtmp but it is not clear on what I should do.

Re: Managing /var/adm/wtmp

Tom Danzig — Thu, 24 Aug 2000 14:07:49 GMT

You could do:

cat /var/adm/wtmp | /usr/sbin/acct/fwtmp > /tmp/ascii_wtmp

vi /tmp/ascii_wtp to delete the records you want.

cat /tmp/ascii_wtmp | /usr/sbin/acct/fwtmp -ic > /var/adm/wtmp

I've done this and it works quite well.

Re: Managing /var/adm/wtmp

James R. Ferguson — Thu, 24 Aug 2000 14:08:17 GMT

Pat:

You might try using fwtmp to convert the current wtmp file to an ASCII file that you can further manuipulate with a script of your own which trims the contents down.

...JRF...

Re: Managing /var/adm/wtmp

Antoanetta Naghiu — Thu, 24 Aug 2000 14:22:28 GMT

If you want to see wtmp contains, run last (see man last). To clean up wtmp, I'm using #>0 (or if you are not lazy to type, same thing as Alex said: #cat /dev/null >/var/adm/wtmp.

Re: Managing /var/adm/wtmp

Patrick Bridwell — Thu, 24 Aug 2000 14:38:52 GMT

Thanks,

Tom Danzig's answer hit the nail on the head.

I appreciate all of your replies.

Re: Managing /var/adm/wtmp

CHRIS_ANORUO — Thu, 24 Aug 2000 16:33:44 GMT

Patrick,

It will be a great work to put the line commands in cron file. Example:
0 22 1 6,12 * /var/adm/wtmp | /usr/sbin/acct/fwtmp > /tmp/ascii_wtmp
5 22 1 6,12 * /tmp/ascii_wtmp | /usr/sbin/acct/fwtmp > /var/adm/wtmp

Chris