Couldn’t open /etc/securetty: No such file or directory

Background

On a seemingly fresh and perfect server you might see the following events logged in the /var/log/auth.log file:

May 14 06:29:52 SERVER gdm-password]: pam_unix(gdm-password:auth): Couldn't open /etc/securetty: No such file or directory
May 14 07:40:14 SERVER su: pam_unix(su:auth): Couldn't open /etc/securetty: No such file or directory

This is disturbing because it’s a fresh installation and everything else seems fine. Actually the system is working too, but log files are dirty with this message.

Solution

cp /usr/share/doc/util-linux/examples/securetty /etc/securetty

Reference

• https://askubuntu.com/questions/1239503/ubuntu-20-04-and-20-10-etc-securetty-no-such-file-or-directory