eric@aplvax.UUCP (06/14/84)
I have a VAX 11/780 running 4.1 that has decided to start dumping garbage into /usr/adm/messages. First off, none of this garbage is coming out to the console. But every ten minutes, the system appends about 40 lines to /usr/adm/messages, and the data is usually the same (currently a concatenation of a couple of boot sequences). Originally it was mostly a bunch of debug messages from a driver, but the debug messages have since been disabled and, as I said, the message is now just a couple of boot sequences. Further, since this started, we have re-booted a couple of times. I will gladly take any recommendations on how to stop this, or what caused it in the first place. -- eric ...!seismo!umcp-cs!aplvax!eric
jonab@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Jonathan Biggar) (06/16/84)
In article <659@aplvax.UUCP> eric@aplvax.UUCP writes: > > I have a VAX 11/780 running 4.1 that has decided to start dumping >garbage into /usr/adm/messages. First off, none of this garbage is coming >out to the console. But every ten minutes, the system appends about 40 lines >to /usr/adm/messages, and the data is usually the same (currently a >concatenation of a couple of boot sequences). Originally it was mostly >a bunch of debug messages from a driver, but the debug messages have since >been disabled and, as I said, the message is now just a couple of boot >sequences. Further, since this started, we have re-booted a couple of >times. I will gladly take any recommendations on how to stop this, or what >caused it in the first place. Funny thing. I had just noticed the exact same problem. The file /usr/adm/messages is written to by a the program /etc/dmesg which is run every ten minutes from crontab. The crontab entry should look like this: 0,10,20,30,40,50 * * * * /etc/dmesg - >>/usr/adm/messages The '-' as an argument instructs dmesg to compute the kernel error messages incrementally, i. e. only write to /usr/adm/messages those error messages that are new. I thought that this would fix the problem, but our crontab was correct. However, there is an answer! After staring at the code for dmesg for a while, I discovered that the file /usr/adm/msgbuf must exist for dmesg to determine the new messages. So there are to things you should check: 1) That the crontab entry is correct. 2) That the file /usr/adm/msgbuf exists. Jon Biggar {allegra,burdvax,cbosgd,hplabs,ihnp4,sdccsu3}!sdcrdcf!jonab