Bug#1129535: sysvinit-core: please restore "last" from sysvinit

[Andrew Bower]

Hi g1,

On Mon, Mar 02, 2026 at 05:03:56PM +0100, g1 wrote:
> In trixie, the venerable "last" utility has been retired from util-linux,
> in favour of a younger one (that by the way brings in two extra packages,
> but I digress).
> 
> What about resurrecting the one from src:sysvinit?

I agree. If nothing else, there is value as a 'forensic' tool (as the
pkg-security team would classify it).

See: https://salsa.debian.org/debian/sysvinit/-/merge_requests/14

Also see https://bugs.debian.org/1095490 for the corresponding
suggestion for util-linux.

> It builds and works like a charm, but is not packaged in sysvinit-utils
> because it's listed in debian/not-installed.  It might be just an
> update-alternatives(1) away from being useful.

Since glibc made tv_sec unsigned in struct utmp, the Y2038 argument for
keeping this out no longer applies (it becomes Y2106), but I would
suggest checking that the code and behaviour of the tools handles this
correctly, before restoring them to the archive.

You may also be interested in https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/python-utmp,
which is capable of reading utmp-format files and is presently the
subject of a salvaging exercise (https://bugs.debian.org/1128564).

Hope this helps!

Andrew