Package: wtmpdb Version: 0.73.0-3+deb13u1 Severity: minor Dear Maintainer,
When shutting down after wtmp.db log rotation has been conducted by logrotate, the following error is output during shutdown: search_id: Open entry for tty '~' not found This is because an empty log file is created as a result of rotation. This can be reproduced as follows, where one can also so there is no record corresponding to the shutdown event. $ touch foo $ wtmpdb shutdown -f foo search_id: Open entry for tty '~' not found $ last -f foo foo has no entries Looking into an alternative approach to effect the rotation, the built-in command does not fix this: $ cp /var/log/wtmp.db foo $ wtmpdb rotate -d 0 -f foo 13 entries moved to ./foo_20260404.db $ last -f foo foo has no entries $ wtmpdb shutdown -f foo search_id: Open entry for tty '~' not found $ last -f foo foo has no entries It would be nice if wtmpdb could create an log file containing only the current system startup entry, or only all currently open entries. However, even if it did, the rotation command is unreasonably slow. I am not sure what the best answer is. One could synthesise a (false) entry as a post-rotation action with 'wtmpdb boot' - the user feedback [1] on that idea so far was that it were better to have an error than a synthetic entry. The ideal way to solve would require upstream enhancement to replicate the correct boot time. The rigidity of the libwtmpdb API does not help us here, unfortunately - it makes a downstream patch difficult. $ rm foo $ touch foo $ wtmpdb boot -f foo Boot time too far in the past, using current time: Boot time: Sat Apr 4 08:51:11 2026 Current time: Sat Apr 4 10:01:30 2026 $ wtmpdb shutdown -f foo $ last -f foo s-reboot system boot 6.10.12-686 Sat Apr 4 10:01 - 10:02 (00:00) foo begins Sat Apr 4 10:01:30 2026 [1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1094965#64 -- System Information: Debian Release: 13.4 APT prefers stable-updates APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable-security'), (500, 'proposed-updates'), (500, 'stable') Architecture: i386 (i686) Kernel: Linux 6.10.12-686 (SMP w/2 CPU threads; PREEMPT) Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash Init: sysvinit (via /sbin/init) Versions of packages wtmpdb depends on: ii libaudit1 1:4.0.5-1 ii libc6 2.42-1 ii libsystemd0 257.9-1~deb13u1 ii libwtmpdb0 0.73.0-3+deb13u1 Versions of packages wtmpdb recommends: ii libpam-wtmpdb 0.73.0-3+deb13u1 ii logrotate 3.22.0-1 wtmpdb suggests no packages. -- no debconf information
