Avamar: logrotate warning: error: destination /var/log/wtmp-xxxxxxxx.xz already exists, skipping rotation

Summary: Avamar log rotation reports that the destination log file already exists.

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Symptoms

A warning appears in /var/log/messages:
  
2022/02/08-18:15:07 GMT 1 ERROR avamar Feb 8 18:15:04 avamar logrotate: error: destination /var/log/wtmp-20220208.xz already exists

The serverlogscanner detects the warning and displays it in the UI.

Cause

Leftover files that were not deleted during the Avamar upgrade cause the problem.

Avamar versions 19.1 and below use SLES 11.x, a SysV init OS that rotates logs using logrotate and cron.
Avamar 19.2 and newer are based on SLES 12.x, which is a systemd based OS and the log rotation works differently.

Resolution

1. Log in to the affected Avamar node as an admin
2. Elevate privileges to root
     
su -

3. Verify that the configuration files exist in /etc/cron.daily and /etc/cron.d directories.
Sample output:
  
root@avamar:~/#: ls -l /etc/cron.daily/
total 28
-rwx------ 1 root root 587 Oct 13 2017 logrotate
-rwx------ 1 root root 778 May 21 2019 mdadm
-rwx------ 1 root root 1875 Sep 1 2003 suse.de-backup-rc.config
-rwx------ 1 root root 2059 Sep 8 2003 suse.de-backup-rpmdb
-rwx------ 1 root root 566 Jul 23 2004 suse.de-check-battery
-rwx------ 1 root root 1314 Jul 27 2005 suse.de-clean-tmp
-rwx------ 1 root root 371 Sep 1 2003 suse.de-cron-local

root@avamar:~/#: ls -l /etc/cron.d/
total 4.0K
-rw------- 1 root root 63 Mar 27 2019 novell.com-suse_register

4. Move all files from both directories to a temporary directory created under /home/admin.
  
mkdir /home/admin/cron_files
mv /etc/cron.daily/* /home/admin/cron_files
mv /etc/cron.d/* /home/admin/cron_files

5. Procedure complete

Affected Products

Avamar Server
Article Properties
Article Number: 000211181
Article Type: Solution
Last Modified: 01 Aug 2025
Version:  4
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