Ubuntu crashes every few days

[Eamonn Sullivan]

On 12/6/06, Neil McLeod <neil.a.mcleod at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Every few days, my entire system (Ubuntu Dapper on a Thinkpad T42) crashes.
> I can't even move the mouse or suspend the computer. Pressing
> Ctrl+Alt+Backspace or Ctrl+Alt+Delete does nothing.
>
> Here is what appears in my /var/log/syslog prior to crash. I constantly get
> these messages:
> > Dec  5 22:39:02 localhost /USR/SBIN/CRON[21525]: (root) CMD (  [ -d
> /var/lib/php5 ] && find /var/lib/php5/ -type f -cmin
> +$(/usr/lib/php5/maxlifetime) -print0 | xargs -r -0 rm)
> > Dec  5 22:39:05 localhost cupsd: Unable to open log file
> "/var/log/cups/error_log" - Permission denied
[snip]
>
> Here are the file permissions in /var/log/cups (though I thought I had
> changed the owner of error_log to cupsys at some point to try to fix the
> problem):
[snip]
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root   lp      1.7M 2006-12-05 23:23 error_log

I don't know the answer, of course, but one thing that jumped out at
me is that some of the files in /var/log/cups are owned by root
instead of the cupsys user. I'm not at my own thinkpad (a z60t) to
check if it is the same on my system. One thing I would try is to
change the ownership of the files in that directory:

sudo chown cupsys:lp /var/log/cups/*

At least then the cups process can write to its own error_log and you
may get more information.

-Eamonn