Re: wtmp fills up

From: Nico Kadel-Garcia (nkadel_at_comcast.net)
Date: 02/21/04 

Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2004 13:48:09 -0500

Alex Zlatsin wrote:
> Here is the solution: sshd -D
> sshd will not detach and does not become a daemon.
> otherwise it detaches every time somebody ssh and the record written
> to wtmp.

Ohhh. But see, it's *supposed* to log every time someone logs in via sshd or
other means. That's what wtmp is for., it's what the "last" command uses to
report who last logged in and when. The underlying question is not "how to
stop sshd from loggiing", but "why is it filling wtmp?"

Why *is* it filling up? Don't you rotate that on a daily or weekly basis, or
is it on a really tiny and over-crowded partition, or what? wtmp is known to
be a very inefficient way of recording this information, but it's old and
familiar and robust, so you may not want to disable it entirely.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: wtmp fills up
    ... sshd will not detach and does not become a daemon. ... otherwise it detaches every time somebody ssh and the record written to ...
    (comp.security.ssh)
  • Re: wtmp fills up
    ... It's not a question how to clean up wtmp, but why sshd is filling it up? ...
    (comp.security.ssh)
Quantcast