On Tue, 28 Oct 2008 00:54:22 +0100, Björn Persson wrote: > I Beartooth wrote: [....] > Switching the KVM switch is equivalent to unplugging all the devices > from one computer and plugging them into another. Linux will print some > messages every time you plug in or remove a USB device, but you'd have > to be switching like crazy to produce 54 GB of messages that way. I > suppose a loose cable might make it seem like all the devices are > constantly plugged in and removed, but I still don't quite see how the > log could grow that big. The excerpt you posted was 3411 characters. > Printing all of that once a second for a week would still produce only > two gigabytes. [...] >> Finally, an hour or so ago, I tried turning the printer off with >> its power switch. Since that time, the messages have become fewer, but >> not stopped. > > I'd imagine that the messages about the printer have stopped, and the > ones about the keyboard, the mouse and the hub continue. (There's a USB > hub inside the KVM switch.) Every time you switch to another machine to > look for new messages, you cause more messages. Right, about both; but some machines get more non-printer messages; I don't know why. > Those messages aren't errors and you don't need to worry about them as > long as the log doesn't grow out of control again. It's quite possible > that most of those 54 GB was something completely different that hasn't > resurfaced yet. I'd recommend doing "ls -l /var/log/messages*" now and > then to keep an eye on it, and investigate further if it grows to many > megabytes. I fiddled a bit with the command you suggested (for which, again, many thanks!), and eventually tried doing "$ ls -lh /var/log|less" -- which has the advantage that I need not use a terminal tab logged to root (nor sudo). Doing that on the #1 machine (where I am now) showed a bunch of stuff up to maybe 200K (for very few), and this : [....] -rw------- 1 root root 26K 2008-10-28 12:37 messages -rw------- 1 root root 299K 2008-10-05 01:00 messages-20081005 -rw------- 1 root root 266K 2008-10-12 03:11 messages-20081012 -rw------- 1 root root 303K 2008-10-19 04:06 messages-20081019 -rw------- 1 root root 0 2008-10-27 11:08 messages-20081026 [....] I'd like to pipe that into top, or some such, to make it display only the files of 100K and up; but trying to read the man page for top, as usual for powerful commands, makes me think of standing at the foot of a huge cliff of ice. Somewhere in this thread is a way (or maybe a couple of ways) to skim those files without actually running through them. Maybe I can find it again. (I've also started skimming through root's mail; and I have to admit a lot more of it makes sense than last time I tried.) -- Beartooth Staffwright, PhD, Neo-Redneck Linux Convert Remember I know precious little of what I am talking about. -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines
