dellwo@OTTAWA.SCS.UIUC.EDU ("Martin J. Dellwo") (06/07/91)
I've noticed for a long time that when I log on the console, a lot of messages accumulate for past errors and are repeated with the new time as if they've just occurred. I check the syslog often to see if any strange problems come up, and this accumulation makes it difficult to sort out what's going on. For instance, we get console/syslog messages all the time when we do tape backups, saying the device had recoverable errors. Supposing I log on to the graphics console and I do a tape backup and get a 'NOTICE:' error in the syslog. Now suppose I log off and then in again to the graphics console. If I look in the syslog, there are normally messages associated with restarting the graphics, usually a line with 'In limbo' followed by a line with 'Alive'. Normally a copyright notice of several lines appears followed by a system version line, both with a 'CIO:' designation, eg: Jun 5 13:09:32 ottawa grcond[20072]: CIO: IRIX System V .... When a previous error has occurred, this copyright and version notice is replaced by all or part of the previous error message, tacked on to where the normal copyright text would follow the 'CIO:' For instance, forgetting the date stamp and machine name, a previous error message such as ... unix: WARNING: ... now might appear, with the current date/time, as ... grcond[pid]: CIO: WARNING: ... The end of the error message is always there, that is to say, any part of the error message up to the end is included: this may mean part of the last word, or the entire message from several lines. The truncation seems arbitrary. After a new message occurs, this is also repeated at the next graphics console login as above, so that the copyright notice is replaced by text from several disparate past errors/notices. This continues until the machine is rebooted. The hangup signal doesn't cure it, I don't remember if killing it totally and restarting has an effect. Also, I believe only notice-level or higher messages have this effect, but am not sure. So what is happening? What does CIO stand for? I have a suspicion if I wasn't doing debug-level logging this would go away, but something in me just craves information. And anyway that isn't fixed, just means I can't see it. (Actually I wish the copyright notice would just go away--once at bootup times would seem adequate to me...) Since the whole thing seems a little flakey to me, what else is getting screwed up? I'm running 3.3.2, but have noticed this since at least 3.2 if not 3.1. In spite of above worries, haven't felt like bothering the hotline... Martin Dellwo University of Illinois dellwo@ottawa.scs.uiuc.ed "...I'd rather be in Philadelphia..."WCFields