I don't think its anything to worry about. I get the same thing in my LogWatch message every day with RedHat 9. If you study the times I think you'll find those errors come up every time you log into your own Linode with SSH.

I've seen some queries about this in the RH newsgroups. There is something not configured quite right so SSH can't write to /var/log/lastlog even though it exists and there doesn't seem to be an obvious permissions problem.

Does anyone know how to fix this? I'd like to know how to clean up the logs.

Ross

@tetranz:

I don't think its anything to worry about. I get the same thing in my LogWatch message every day with RedHat 9. If you study the times I think you'll find those errors come up every time you log into your own Linode with SSH.

I've seen some queries about this in the RH newsgroups. There is something not configured quite right so SSH can't write to /var/log/lastlog even though it exists and there doesn't seem to be an obvious permissions problem.

Does anyone know how to fix this? I'd like to know how to clean up the logs.

Ross

Now I've looked into it further, and there's a file which is /etc/logrotate.conf . In that file, I have the following:

create new (empty) log files after rotating old ones:

create

uncomment this if you want your log files compressed:

compress

some packages install log rotation information in this directory:

include /etc/logrotate.d

Rotate /var/log/wtmp:

/var/log/wtmp {

monthly

create 0664 root root

rotate 1

}

I would of thought that's enough, it seems the conf informs the OS it should create a new file once the logs have been rotated. And no I don't get that message evertime I log in/log out, I think it's more of a problem with my log rotations, since i've verified mesages, messages.1, messages.2 and they all have that error message. Any suggestions?