Using Mandrake 9.0 I noticed something diffrent from 8.2:
My /var/log/syslog and /var/ log/kernel/info get longer than 4 Gig each. A few days ago I cleared them, and today they are more then 2.5 Gig again !
My / partition is 20G but it fills up quickly as both those files grow over 8G !
Anyone an idea ?
( the /var/log/messages has a fixed length, as lines are added, the disapear at the top )

Bruno

There's an aplication that can handle that for you, it's logrotate:

ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linu...de/SRPMS/SRPMS

Hmm. You better find out what's filling your logs.
For instance if your entry looks like this:
kern.=debug;kern.=info;kern.=notice /var/log/kernel/info
it means everything from the informational level (6) and up will be logged:
To quickly see what DOSses your logs you could add this entry (check your tab usage) and restart syslogd (kill -HUP syslog):
kern.info /dev/tty12
This will log all messages with the kern facility from info level up into your log (as the first rule shows) but also to tty12 (switch to it with ALT+CTRL+F12). Watch the output for over and over repeating lines.

No there are no error messages, mostly it is this kind of stuff:

/var/log/kernel/info:
Jan 13 23:30:42 localhost kernel: ppp_synctty: send buffer, count = 20
Jan 13 23:30:42 localhost kernel: FF 03 C0 21 01 01 00 10 ...!....
Jan 13 23:30:42 localhost kernel: 02 06 00 00 00 00 05 06 ........
Jan 13 23:30:42 localhost kernel: 27 2B 2C F2 '+,.
Jan 13 23:30:42 localhost kernel: ppp_synctty: receive buffer, count = 18
Jan 13 23:30:42 localhost kernel: FF 03 C0 21 01 95 00 0E ...!....
Jan 13 23:30:42 localhost kernel: 03 04 C0 23 05 06 5A 88 ...#..Z.
Jan 13 23:30:42 localhost kernel: C9 C6 ..
Jan 13 23:30:42 localhost kernel: ppp_synctty: send buffer, count = 18
Jan 13 23:30:42 localhost kernel: FF 03 C0 21 02 95 00 0E ...!....
Jan 13 23:30:42 localhost kernel: 03 04 C0 23 05 06 5A 88 ...#..Z.
Jan 13 23:30:42 localhost kernel: C9 C6 ..
Jan 13 23:30:42 localhost kernel: ppp_synctty: receive buffer, count = 20
Jan 13 23:30:42 localhost kernel: FF 03 C0 21 02 01 00 10 ...!....
Jan 13 23:30:42 localhost kernel: 02 06 00 00 00 00 05 06 ........
Jan 13 23:30:42 localhost kernel: 27 2B 2C F2 '+,.
Jan 13 23:30:42 localhost kernel: ppp_synctty: send buffer, count = 36
Jan 13 23:30:42 localhost kernel: FF 03 C0 23 01 01 00 20 ...#...
Jan 13 23:30:42 localhost kernel: 14 6F 6E 75 72 62 40 77 .onurb@w

(same goes for the /var/log/syslog , all kind of ppp messages)

I've got that damn Speedtouch USB modem, I think that's filling my logs !
I have found a solution myself: rm /var/log/kernel/info and rm /var/log/syslog once a day with kcron. It builts a new log automaticly.

Thanks for your help, Bruno

Seems like you're using debug output: disable it, because just deleting the logs w/o looking ain't a good option IMO.

Where and how do I disable debug output ?

Bruno

Look in file /etc/ppp/options (or somewhere around there) for "kdebug 31" which is kernel debugging ppp at level 31 (way verbose):
0 - no debugging
1 - debug messages
2 - log incoming packets
4 - log outgoing packets
8 - log tty output buffers
16 - log tty input buffers

Make it read "kdebug 0". Dunno if you have to reload modules or reconnect to make it work. You can always reboot.

Thanks unSpawn, looks like a good tip.
my /etc/ppp/peers/adsl says: kdebug 1 I'll change that to 0

I recieved another interesting tip at Mandreke-Club forum:

Anacron !

As my computer is not on 24 hrs a day, cron-jobs like logrotate are forgotten because they run at 4 o'clock in the morning. Anacron detects forgotten cron-jobs and executes them shortly after boot. ( updatedb is another forgotten job )

It looks there are quiet some other jobs that have to run at night, once a week or once a month, if anyone has an idea what those jobs might be, let me know, I got curious now !

Anacron was installed by default in MDK 8.1 and 8.2 but not in MDK 9.0

For those of you who's computer is not up 24/7 :
urpmi anacron (CD 3)

Bruno

Some other jobs:

makewhatis - create a whatis database
postfix - check for problems
slocate - the aplication that updatedb points
tmpwatch - cleans the old/unused files in tmp
and anacron itself

there others too ...

Lovely, thanks

Add

daily
rotate 5
size=200k

to your /etc/logrotate.d/syslog
inbetween the brackets where it says
/var/log/messages

Looks like a very usefull tip, aswell it gave me an insight in what logs are held in mandrake, thanks

Bruno