Package: wtmpdb Version: 0.13.0-1 Severity: minor Tags: patch Debian Policy says a package description should provide enough information for users to decide whether they need the package installed. But why would anybody want to read something called the "wtmp database"? The significance of that particular implementation detail is very much not obvious from its name - see for instance
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/127211/why-are-utmp-wtmp-and-btmp-called-as-they-are Instead I would suggest recycling some text from the much more informative man page and/or GitHub README. My patch has: | Package: wtmpdb [...] | Description: utility to display login/logout/reboot information | This package provides the program wtmpdb, which reads wtmp's | database of user logins/logouts and system reboots. | . | It provides a year-2038 safe replacement for the traditional Unix | "last" utility. I've left the library packages alone, since a library's function is usually obvious from the things that depend on it... but in fact you might want the descriptions to comment on the way wtmpdb has a Recommends: libpam-wtmpdb instead of a Depends. It's not obvious why anyone would ever want to install wtmpdb without libpam-wtmpdb (as opposed to just configuring the PAM module "off"), so if there is a real potential use case for doing so it would be helpful if the package description for one or both of these packages gave a hint. (If there isn't one, the relation should be a Depends.) -- System Information: Debian Release: trixie/sid APT prefers testing APT policy: (500, 'testing') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Kernel: Linux 6.10.9-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU threads; PREEMPT) Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_GB:en Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system) Versions of packages wtmpdb depends on: ii libaudit1 1:3.1.2-4+b1 ii libc6 2.40-2 ii libsystemd0 256.6-1 ii libwtmpdb0 0.13.0-1 Versions of packages wtmpdb recommends: ii libpam-wtmpdb 0.13.0-1 wtmpdb suggests no packages. -- no debconf information -- JBR with qualifications in linguistics, experience as a Debian sysadmin, and probably no clue about this particular package
--- control.orig 2024-07-27 15:41:22.000000000 +0100 +++ control 2024-10-02 19:31:02.670023798 +0100 @@ -57,6 +57,9 @@ Recommends: libpam-wtmpdb, Multi-Arch: foreign -Description: Read wtmp database - This package provides the wtmpdb program, to read the - wtmp database. +Description: utility to display login/logout/reboot information + This package provides the program wtmpdb, which reads wtmp's + database of user logins/logouts and system reboots. + . + It provides a year-2038 safe replacement for the traditional Unix + "last" utility.
