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Strange messages

Does anyone know why I keep getting messages output to the console such as "login(pam_unix)[2252]: session opened for user root by (uid=0)"?

I'm assuming they're kernel messages and I have a module enabled in the kernel to make them appear but I can't figure out how to stop them :)

The secret is in your /etc/syslog.conf file.. ;)

Quote:

Originally posted by trickykid
The secret is in your /etc/syslog.conf file.. ;)

That was the first thing I checked :)

kern.* is commented out so no messages should appear on the console.

This is my syslog.conf:

Code:

# /etc/syslog.conf

# For info about the format of this file, see "man syslog.conf"

# and /usr/doc/sysklogd/README.linux.  Note the '-' prefixing some

# of these entries;  this omits syncing the file after every logging.

# In the event of a crash, some log information might be lost, so

# if this is a concern to you then you might want to remove the '-'.

# Be advised this will cause a performation loss if you're using

# programs that do heavy logging.



# Uncomment this to see kernel messages on the console.

#kern.*                                                        /dev/console



# Log anything 'info' or higher, but lower than 'warn'.

# Exclude authpriv, cron, mail, and news.  These are logged elsewhere.

*.info;*.!warn;\

        authpriv.none;cron.none;mail.none;news.none        -/var/log/messages



# Log anything 'warn' or higher.

# Exclude authpriv, cron, mail, and news.  These are logged elsewhere.

*.warn;\

        authpriv.none;cron.none;mail.none;news.none        -/var/log/syslog



# Debugging information is logged here.

*.=debug                                                -/var/log/debug



# Private authentication message logging:

authpriv.*                                                -/var/log/secure



# Cron related logs:

cron.*                                                        -/var/log/cron



# Mail related logs:

mail.*                                                        -/var/log/maillog



# Emergency level messages go to all users:

*.emerg                                                        *



# This log is for news and uucp errors:

uucp,news.crit                                                -/var/log/spooler



# Uncomment these if you'd like INN to keep logs on everything.

# You won't need this if you don't run INN (the InterNetNews daemon).

#news.=crit                                        -/var/log/news/news.crit

#news.=err                                        -/var/log/news/news.err

#news.notice                                        -/var/log/news/news.notice

Have I missed something?

Do you see any other messages besides the one you provided? If not, perhaps you need to check your pam configurations as that would probably be the source in itself of logging it's own messages to the console.

Yeah. Another common one is to do with my wireless NIC and that's "eth0: New link status: AP In Range(0005)".

Thinking about it, the login one and that one are the only ones I get I think. I also get one when I log out too.

Uncomment it and change /dev/console to a file or another tty to test; of course after your changes restart syslogd.

I've just done "/etc/rc.d/rc.syslog stop" to stop the logger but I'm still getting the messages on the console which leads me to think it could be something else.

Quote:

Originally posted by redneon
I've just done "/etc/rc.d/rc.syslog stop" to stop the logger but I'm still getting the messages on the console which leads me to think it could be something else.

I would assume so as well..

Quote:

Originally posted by trickykid
I would assume so as well..

Any ideas what else could be causing it? :)

Quote:

Originally posted by redneon
Any ideas what else could be causing it? :)

Not sure, don't know anything about your system except of what you've provided here. :)

It's a clean Slackware 10.1 install. I haven't installed anything on top of it yet. That's why I'm assuming it's a kernel module.

I've never had this issue and by default Slackware doesn't log kernel messages to the console. This is a base install with nothing whatsoever added after the initial install?

Well I've installed the NVidia drivers, TightVNC server and Dropline Gnome on top but I did exactly the same on another machine and there are no messages being output to the console on that one.

I may just have to format and reinstall Slackware.

Quote:

Originally posted by redneon
Well I've installed the NVidia drivers, TightVNC server and Dropline Gnome on top but I did exactly the same on another machine and there are no messages being output to the console on that one.

I may just have to format and reinstall Slackware.

It's Dropline Gnome which installs PAM and I'm not sure where it would keep that configuration at if it's overriding the syslog.conf file. Dropline installs a bunch of crap that doesn't even relate to Gnome, I use to like their idea but I think they've gone a little overboard with the bloated crap they use. Sorry, just my opinion on that matter.

I agree. They do install a lot of stuff that isn't part of gnome which is annoying. I think I just use it as a force of habit. I started using it ages ago and have just gone with the flow. I might do a reinstall of Slackware and just install gnome from source or perhaps look for some Slackware 10.1 gnome binaries for the latest release of gnome.

In the meantime I'll look for the pam configuration file and see if I can make sense of it :)

Quote:

Originally posted by trickykid
It's Dropline Gnome which installs PAM and I'm not sure where it would keep that configuration at if it's overriding the syslog.conf file. Dropline installs a bunch of crap that doesn't even relate to Gnome, I use to like their idea but I think they've gone a little overboard with the bloated crap they use. Sorry, just my opinion on that matter.

If you've ever built GNOME before, you'd know that its 200+ packages rely completely upon the existing functionality of the rest of the system libraries and programs... KDE is the complete opposite, where most everything is contained within itself. Perhaps you could explain which components are "bloated" in Dropline GNOME?

Re: Strange messages

Quote:

Originally posted by redneon
Does anyone know why I keep getting messages output to the console such as "login(pam_unix)[2252]: session opened for user root by (uid=0)"?

I'm assuming they're kernel messages and I have a module enabled in the kernel to make them appear but I can't figure out how to stop them :)

The /bin/login is PAM-aware. There shouldn't normally be any ooutput to the console, but it could be something specific to your installation. These messages normally are sent to /var/log/messages.