[Bug] Segments dated 1970-01-01 are unexpectedly created and persist on disk

[mrproliu]

Search before asking

• I had searched in the issues and found no similar issues.

Apache SkyWalking Component

BanyanDB (apache/skywalking-banyandb)

What happened

A segment directory named seg-19700101 (dated 1970-01-01, Unix epoch) is created on disk under the group's TSDB data directory. This segment persists across restarts and participates in normal operations
including rotation, retention, and snapshots.

The 1970-dated segment also interferes with retention logic — since it's always the "oldest" segment, it may be retained or deleted in unexpected ways depending on TTL configuration.

What you expected to happen

Segments should only be created with reasonable, valid dates. A segment dated 1970-01-01 should never exist in a production system. The system should either reject the creation of such segments or validate
timestamps before creating segment directories.

How to reproduce

Continuously write trace data to BanyanDB. After some time, a seg-19700101 directory appears on disk under the group's TSDB data directory.

Anything else

No response

Are you willing to submit a pull request to fix on your own?

• Yes I am willing to submit a pull request on my own!

Code of Conduct

• I agree to follow this project's Code of Conduct