initctl: invalid command: rotate

[Moses Moore]

rsyslog 8.16.0-1ubuntu3.1 , Ubuntu 16.04.6 LTS

the logrotate for rsyslog is a bit awry. The /etc/logrotate.d/rsyslog has this in the postrotate block:
/usr/lib/rsyslog/rsyslog-rotate

But when invoked (either by logrotate or manually) I get:
initctl: invalid command: rotate
Try `initctl --help' for more information.
invoke-rc.d: initscript rsyslog, action "rotate" failed.

The workaround is to change the postrotate block to what I saw in a much earlier version:

postrotate
    service rsyslog rotate > /dev/null
endscript

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 16.04
Package: rsyslog 8.16.0-1ubuntu3.1
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-042stab127.2 x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.1-0ubuntu2.18
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sat Jun 22 00:24:52 2019
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=screen-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_CA.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: rsyslog
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to xenial on 2016-06-15 (1101 days ago)
mtime.conffile..etc.logrotate.d.rsyslog: 2019-06-22T00:24:05.675752

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.