Y2038: /run/utmp, /var/log/wtmp and /var/log/lastlog are gone

Intro

With the last updates openSUSE MicroOS and Tumbleweed don’t use /run/utmp, /var/log/wtmp and /var/log/lastlog anymore. This files will no longer be created. /run/utmp will vanish with the next reboot, /var/log/wtmp and /var/log/lastlog will not be created with a fresh installation. On existing systems, the files will stay, but we will not read it anymore. It can be safely moved away by the administrator.

Background

As already explained in the last two blogs Y2038: Replace utmp with logind and Switch from wtmp to Y2038 safe wtmpdb, this files are not Y2038 safe. /var/log/wtmp got replaced with wtmpdb, /run/utmp with systemd-logind and /var/log/lastlog with lastlog2.

What does this mean for the users?

Hopefully: nothing

All big projects accepted our patches or wrote their own support for this, and the majority of them did already release a new version. This are e.g. coreutils, procps, shadow, util-linux and systemd itself. Using who, w, last, lastlog or similar tools should give you a similar output as before, but there is one big difference: you will no longer see xterm, konsole, screen or similar sessions in the output.

Presentations

There are two presentations explaining this in detail:

• Recording of All Systems Go!
• OSS Europe 2023