From owner-freebsd-questions Sat Dec 29 9:12:54 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from shemp.palomine.net (shemp.palomine.net [216.135.64.135]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id CCFDC37B425 for ; Sat, 29 Dec 2001 09:12:47 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 83447 invoked by uid 1000); 29 Dec 2001 17:12:41 -0000 Date: Sat, 29 Dec 2001 12:12:41 -0500 From: Chris Johnson To: questions@freebsd.org Subject: syslogd blocking => can't su to root Message-ID: <20011229121241.A83423@palomine.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="pWyiEgJYm5f9v55/" Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG --pWyiEgJYm5f9v55/ Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline I discovered this morning that I was unable to su to root, though I had been able to last night. After I enter the password (whether it is correct or incorrect), su just hangs. This is on a FreeBSD 4.4-RELEASE box. The problem seems to be that syslogd is blocking when it tries to write to /dev/console (I'm using a regular, not a serial, console). Another symptom of what I think may be the same problem is that nothing has been written in /var/log/messages for about seven days. The box has been running for eleven days. /var/log/dmesg.today does, however, have more recent entries in it. I'm no syslogd expert, but I suspect that some buffer that syslogd writes to is full, so it's blocking, so su blocks waiting for syslogd to accept its message (or something vaguely along those lines). The syslog conf files are those that were installed by mergemaster. I haven't edited them in any way. The only thing that's non-default is that I'm using -ss instead of -s when I start syslogd. The disk isn't full, there are plenty of inodes, etc. Questions: 1. What might have caused this behavior? I've never seen it on any of the dozens of FreeBSD boxes I've administered over a period of several years. 2. Can I kill syslogd and restart it to solve my immediate problem? 3. What can I do to keep it from happening again? 4. Is there any way to fix the problem remotely? I suspect not, but I can have someone sit down at a console to fix it in a few days. Thanks! Chris Johnson --pWyiEgJYm5f9v55/ Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (FreeBSD) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE8LfmHyeUEMvtGLWERAlLEAKC9p8uMSLScsBgciYEOjMYbonPV8gCeO+wq WrFbCUFGh8LEy9L1WqUBcLA= =Ql5i -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --pWyiEgJYm5f9v55/-- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message