The default logrotate file contains an entry for wtmp: # no packages own lastlog or wtmp -- we'll rotate them here /var/log/wtmp { monthly create 0664 root utmp rotate 1 } The last(1) command takes a -f argument for the wtmp file to use, but it's not capable of reading .gz files, so I'd suggest adding 'nocompress' to the entry.
Hmm... I'm a bit ambivilant on this one. On the one hand, it's easy to unzip if you need to look at old wtmp entries. On the other hand, wtmp (on my systems) is really small; but, I don't have even remotely busy systems. A big wtmp gets ~1M, and compresses down to ~100k. This *could* be an issue... But it's unlikely. I'll think about it for a bit, and make a decision. Any input you want to give would be helpful.
I think I'm going to leave it as it is.
