A buch of junk appears on my console. It looks something like "IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=ff:ff:ff" etc. Someone from my LUG said that iptables was sending messages to the console and that to stop it I could edit /etc/syslog.conf and restart syslog. I went ahead and changed the two lines that directed to /dev/console and * to /dev/null, but I'm still getting these messages. Even if it had stopped the junk, I would still like to know why iptables is doing this(if it really is iptables) and how to stop it. It all started when I used firestarter for the first time, but there doesn't seem to be any option when it comes to directing messages. Any help or background information would be much appreciated.

Joe

Could you post the non-empty lines of your /etc/syslog.conf?

# Log all kernel messages to the console.
# Logging much else clutters up the screen.
#kern.* /dev/null

# Log anything (except mail) of level info or higher.
# Don't log private authentication messages!
*.info;mail.none;authpriv.none;cron.none /var/log/messages

# The authpriv file has restricted access.
authpriv.* /var/log/secure

# Log all the mail messages in one place.
mail.* /var/log/maillog


# Log cron stuff
cron.* /var/log/cron

# Everybody gets emergency messages
#*.emerg /dev/null

# Save news errors of level crit and higher in a special file.
uucp,news.crit /var/log/spooler

# Save boot messages also to boot.log
local7.* /var/log/boot.log

Change "#kern.* /dev/null" to read "kern.PRIO /dev/console", where PRIO is one of crit or alert*. Restart syslogd.
*Read "man syslog.conf", under "Selectors", the part about priorities.

This is strange. It seems like you get a certain type of message "kern" "emerg" or whatever at a certain priority directed to a certain file/device/whatever. I can't imagine why things would show up on my console when I directed them to /dev/null. I followed your advice and I'm now waiting to see if I get any junk. Thanks much.

Joe

I'm now waiting to see if I get any junk
for pri in debug info notice warn err crit alert emerg panic; do
logger -p kern.$pri "gimme junk (pri: $pri)"; done

Ummm.... not sure what that meant, but I'm still getting junk. Hmmm...

Joe

Ummm.... not sure what that meant, but I'm still getting junk. Hmmm...
OK, but at what level? Same? What distro?

This is after I changed it to crit "kern.crit /dev/console".... I'm using Red Hat 9... I hope I'm not pissing you off.

Joe

This is after I changed it to crit "kern.crit /dev/console"
Did you restart syslogd?

I hope I'm not pissing you off.
No. You aren't. Takes a lot more to piss me off :-]