[CentOS] /dev/null permission changes figured out

Thu Dec 16 19:17:22 UTC 2010
Benjamin Franz <jfranz at freerun.com>

On 12/16/2010 11:14 AM, Benjamin Franz wrote:
> On 12/16/2010 10:29 AM, Joe Pruett wrote:
>> a while back i reported an issue where /dev/null was getting set to 600
>> perms after a system update.  i finally figured out what it is.  i don't
>> care about failed logins and have limited space on some servers, so i
>> symlinked /var/log/btmp to /dev/null.  the initscripts package does a
>> chmod 600 /var/log/btmp, so voila /dev/null gets changed.
>>
>> so now i know why it happened just to me.  i now need to figure out a
>> better way to deal with btmp.  any ideas from the list?
>>
> Put a logrotate config for /var/log/btmp in /etc/logrotate.d that
> rotates it once a day and use 'rotate 0' to just throw them away.
>
> See 'man logrotate' for the configuration syntax.
>

The man page for lastb says if you just complete delete /var/log/btmp 
the system shouldn't recreate it on its own.

That is the simplest answer.

-- 
Benjamin Franz