Troubleshooting 'dmesg', /var/log/messages...

[Vincent Trouilliez]

Every time I start the machine, dmesg reports a few errors,
in /var/log/messages I see that dmesg output plus some more errors. I
don't know what they mean nor how serious they are, but it does worry me
a bit. I would like so much having "clean" log files.

Dmesg errors:

1) I get half a dozen lines worth of garbage characters:

RAMDISK: Loading 4116 blocks [1 disk] into ram disk... |/-\|/-
\|/-\|/-\|/-\|/-\|/-\|/-\|/-\|/-\|/-
\|/-\|/-\|/-\|/-\|/-\|/-\|/-\|/-\|/-
\|/-\|/-\|/-\|/-\|/-\|/-\|/-\|/-\|/-
\|/-\|/-\|/-\|/-\|/-\|/-\|/-\|/-\|/-
\|/-\|/-\|/-\|/-\|/-\|/-\|/-\|/-\|/-
\|/-\|/-\|/-\|/-\|/-\|/-\|/-\|/-\|/-
\|/-\|/-\|/-\|/-\|/-\|/-\|/-\|/-
\|/done.

2) two lines later, I get:

vesafb: probe of vesafb0 failed with error -6

'vesa', doesn't this have to do with video ? Given how many random X and
GDM crashes and restarts I get, I could do without this vesa error
thing... :-/


Then, when I look at /var/log/messages, I get these errors about 30
minutes after the machine has started. I get these not only after the
boot, but regularly, spread over the entire up time, at random interval,
and in random quantity. (sometimes just a line, sometimes two dozens in
a row...).

********
Jan 29 22:35:49 localhost -- MARK --
Jan 29 22:42:05 localhost kernel: mt2032 spurcheck triggered: 2
Jan 29 22:42:08 localhost last message repeated 7 times
Jan 29 22:42:16 localhost kernel: mt2032 spurcheck triggered: 3
Jan 29 22:42:16 localhost kernel: mt2032 spurcheck triggered: 3
Jan 29 22:43:36 localhost last message repeated 8 times
Jan 29 22:44:34 localhost last message repeated 6 times
Jan 29 22:44:37 localhost kernel: mt2032 spurcheck triggered: 2
Jan 29 22:44:38 localhost last message repeated 7 times
********


I welcome any opinions from gurus out there. I so would like my system
to work 'cleanly'. As we say in Frog land "Where is smoke, there is a
fire". So, I can't quite believe all these messages are
trivial...sometihng ust be wrong.... and it ought to be fixed...

Thanks for any help ! :-)

Vince