I ran two logrotates simultaneously as a cron job.

(in abbreviated form)

26 02 * * * logrotate file1
26 02 * * * logrotate file2

(I realize that the idea is to run logrotate once
and then use includes to pull in various files...
but since when did "stupid users" (tm) follow the
intentions of software designers. )

Anyway, I got this error message in the mail:

Subject: Cron <root@pc126> /usr/sbin/logrotate
/etc/logrotate.d/cron

error: bad line 134538360 in state file

Question:  Was this because of a possible file locking
problem with both logrotates trying to read the status
file at the same time?

Bug report:  The relevant piece of the source code
starts on line 687 in the function readState()

  if (sscanf(buf, "%s %d-%d-%d\n", buf2, &year, &month,
&day) != 4) {
            message(MESS_ERROR, "bad line %d in state file
%s\n",
                    stateFilename);
            fclose(f);
            return 1;
        }

The "error" report that I got is not so helpful, because
there is a value missing in the message() statement.

Shouldn't it be:
 message(MESS_ERROR, "bad line %d in state file %s\n",
                    line, stateFilename);

But I am still curious to understand why the problem
appeared at all.  In fact, the log that was supposed
to be rotated simply disappeared.  Not very nice behavior.
I can provide more specific details on request.

Cheers,
  Seth