Martian source messages echoing to terminal!

claude56 · 09-10-2008, 10:08 AM

Hi All-

Thanks for looking.

I'm running Mandriva Spring 08 version. I just installed it a couple of days ago on a network server and still have some glitches to work out.

I noticed a couple of times some messages which looked like log type messages were appearing occasionally on my terminal on the server.

This morning, I am getting continuous messages on all terminals for any user that is logged in. I can't stop it. I checked /etc/syslog.conf for a clue. I saw a line which showed messages being sent to /dev/tty12 and commented it out and restarted syslog. The messages kept coming.

I stopped syslog and the messages keep coming......

I stopped iptables and Shorewall. The messages keep coming....

I'm beginning to think the messages are really coming from Mars.

I don't necessarily care about the content of the messages because I can see them in the log file and research it and work it out in time. I just want to stop echoing to terminal so I can get something done.

Please help me if you can.

paulsm4 · 09-10-2008, 11:38 AM

Please cut/paste some of these messages. The exact text, please.

claude56 · 09-10-2008, 01:06 PM

Thanks for taking an interest.

I can't cut and paste anything. The messages interfere with everything.

Here is is hand copied:

martian source 255.255.255.255 from 192.168.0.254, on dev eth0
ll header ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:00:0e:0c:3e:f8:82:08:00

paulsm4 · 09-10-2008, 05:43 PM

Hi -

I didn't know you meant "martian source" literally!

Here's the solution:
http://www.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lis...3-05/0002.html

Quote:

These are packets that Linux does not expect from the direction they came
from (i.e. packets from internal hosts coming in on the external interface).
The cause is probably a misconfigured machine on your LAN.
You can turn off logging those packets via
/proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/*interface*/log_martians
which is documented in /usr/src/linux/Documentation/proc.txt

... OR ...

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...oot-up-583932/
http://archive.cert.uni-stuttgart.de.../msg00009.html

Quote:

sysctl -a | grep martian
<= This command will print out all entries with "martian"

sysctl -w net.ipv4.conf.all.log_martians = 0
sysctl -w net.ipv4.conf.lo.log_martians = 0
sysctl -w net.ipv4.conf.eth0.log_martians = 0
...
<= For each "log_martian" parameter you find, "sysctl -w PARAM=0" will turn it off, and save the changes

'Hope that helps .. PSM

http://linux.about.com/library/cmd/blcmdl8_sysctl.htm

claude56 · 09-11-2008, 07:37 AM

Thanks for your help Paul. I believe I have martian logging turned off now.

The other question I have still remains:

Why were ANY messages echoing to the console? I just upgraded from Mandrake 9.something and I never had messages echoing to the console under that OS.

What program does that?
or
Where is the conf file?
or
How do you turn it on and off?

Thanks, Claude