lastb command does not function
 

Greetings. I read the man page for last/lastb commands and was instructed that to begin using the commands you simply needed to touch the /var/log/wtmp and /var/log/btmp. I did this however I do not get any entries for the lastb (even when I purposely attempt to login with a bad password) and my entries for the last command are only for today.
I'm used to seeing the last command be good forever (once you touch the file wtmp - i.e. today's entries, yesterday's entries, the day before yesterday's entries, etc.) and the lastb command has never worked. The file is alwasy empty. I even opened the permissions to 777 in an attempt to get this function working.
Is there another service that needs to be started? I am using RedHat Rel 4.5.

[root@col4dtc22 ~]# ls -l /var/log/btmp
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Sep 5 13:38 /var/log/btmp

************ Attempted login with a bad password *************

[root@col4dtc22 ~]# lastb

btmp begins Wed Sep 5 13:38:34 2007

Rights should be 0640, other than that I wouldn't know.

On my system the btmp and wtmp files are owned by root:utmp, not root:root. Hope this helps.