[CentOS] Interesting faillog files.

[Ralph Angenendt]

Semih Gokalp wrote:
> yes i did it before.
> 
> du /var/log/message
> 
> 28      /var/log/faillog
> 
> but
> 
> ls -al /var/log/
> 
> -rw-------  1 root   root   137438953440 Oct 24 17:37 faillog
> 
> but why it is different ?

As already has been said: It's a sparse file with holes in it. As to why
it has to be that big: Space is reserved for every user id which can
possibly log in, depending on the *highest* uid which has ever logged in
onto your system. You are on a 64bit system (I'm good, ain't I?) and you
or some process has used a login shell with the user nfsnobody, which is
UID_MAX - 1 on most, if not all, unix systems.

And that one has the id 4294967294, which means that there is some space
reserved for all the other 4294967293 users which are below that uid.

Cheers,

Ralph
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