Package: logrotate Version: 3.7.1-2 Severity: normal The rotation of the wtmp file (and btmp) on a monthly basis is broken. It makes last useless for a significant fraction of the time -- at least during the first week or so of each month, it's not a reliable indicator of the last logins. Using last -f /var/log/wtmp.1 is not a very appealing workaround.
It would be far better if this file was not rotated by logrotate. Since it can indeed grow without bounds, a smart rotation strategy would leave the last N entries (or N days of entries) in the file, and remove the earlier ones (except possibly the last login of each unique user), which would make last always be useful. Of course that requires a binary editor and care must be taken to avoid races during the trim. -- System Information: Debian Release: testing/unstable APT prefers unstable APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental') Architecture: i386 (i686) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash Kernel: Linux 2.4.27 Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) Versions of packages logrotate depends on: ii anacron 2.3-11 a cron-like program that doesn't g ii base-passwd 3.5.10 Debian base system master password ii cron 3.0pl1-91 management of regular background p ii libc6 2.3.5-6 GNU C Library: Shared libraries an ii libpopt0 1.7-5 lib for parsing cmdline parameters ii libselinux1 1.24-4 SELinux shared libraries Versions of packages logrotate recommends: ii mailutils [mailx] 1:0.6.90-2 GNU mailutils utilities for handli -- no debconf information -- see shy jo
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