Why is the file /bin/false so large?

[Amedee Van Gasse (ub)]

On Tue, February 9, 2010 08:32, sgheeren wrote:
> Detlef Lechner wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> why is the file /bin/false so large (30260 bytes) for providing so
>> little functionality (according to 'man false'?
>>
>> Regards,
>> Detlef Lechner
>>
> Could you shed some light? What is large? What is the size of the file
> on you system?
>
> It is 30k with me:
>
> # ls -ltrah `which false`
> -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 30K 2009-10-06 13:07 /bin/false
> # file /bin/false
> /bin/false: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV),
> dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.15, stripped
> # ldd /bin/false
>     linux-gate.so.1 =>  (0x004a3000)
>     libc.so.6 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6 (0x005cb000)
>     /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x00e05000)

FYI: it is similar on Debian:

amedee at intrepid:~$ ls -ltrah `which false`
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 27K apr  4  2008 /bin/false
amedee at intrepid:~$ file `which false`
/bin/false: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV),
dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.8, stripped
amedee at intrepid:~$ ldd `which false`
        linux-vdso.so.1 =>  (0x00007fff9e9ff000)
        libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00007f8eb85df000)
        /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007f8eb893d000)