lastlog devours universe

Andy Ross andy at plausible.org
Tue Jun 7 23:35:09 UTC 2005


Michal Jaegermann wrote:
> That a file is sparse. [...]
>
> This also means that if you will try 'cat /var/log/lastlog > copy'
> this will take a long while and will indeed eat a disk space.
> GNU 'cp' uses some heuristic, and options, to handle sparse files
> but in general copying such things requires some care.

Indeed:

  tar cf /tmp/unbelievably-huge-file /var/log/lastlog

I killed it after 10 seconds and a few hundred MB.  What if someone
tries to backup their logs?  Surely there must be a saner way to store
this data than a 1.2TB sparse file...  This is a sysadmin disaster
waiting to happen.

Andy






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