In "/var/log", "kern.log" "messages" "syslog" swamp disk partition

[Derek Broughton]

Steve Flynn wrote:

> On 26/09/06, Masatran (Deepak), R. <masatran at research.iiit.ac.in> wrote:
>> * Masatran (Deepak), R. <masatran at research.iiit.ac.in> 2006-09-25
>> > Periodically (every few hours or so), the files "kern.log" "messages"
>> > "syslog" in /var/log grow large (half a gigabyte each) till the disk
>> > partition is full.
>>
>> The contents of "kern.log" "messages" "syslog" are attached. These lines
>> repeat till the disk partition is full.
>>
>> I am currently using:
>>
>>     sudo rm /var/log/{kern.log,messages,syslog}
>>
>> "/var/log/kern.log":
>>
>>     Sep 25 17:45:34 localhost kernel: [17190852.760000] cur_rx:2179757,
>>     dirty_rx:2179757 Sep 25 17:45:34 localhost kernel: [17190852.760000]
>>     eth0: NULL pointer encountered in Rx ring
> 
> Do you get a memory squeeze message before these errors?
> 
> How much physical ram does this machine have? How much Swap space is
> defined?
> 
> 
And since it's your ethernet device that's reporting the messages (not very
well - if it did it on a single line, the log daemon would simply
report "previous message repeated xxxxxxx times" and not fill your disk!),
what driver does it use?

Is the network interface working?  You could experiment with the log
settings to try to suppress those specific messages.  Certainly they don't
need to go to all three files, though if either one could be suppressed you
wouldn't have a problem (assuming that the ethernet device actually works).
-- 
derek