Cryptic Messages at startup tonight

[Eric "Shubes"]

Craig White wrote:
> On Fri, 2007-03-09 at 07:51 -0700, Eric "Shubes" wrote:
>> Dazed_75 wrote:
>>> These showed up tonight upon booting into Ubuntu 6.10 (I have disabled
>>> the silent splash exactly so I get a clue occasionally when something
>>> unexpected happens.  These were extracted from /var/log/syslog BTW and
>>> there were pages and pages of them.  Anyone have a clue what thewy mean
>>> or why they are present?
>>>
>>> Mar  8 08:15:54 localhost udevd[2298]: add_to_rules: unknown key
>>> 'ATTRS{idVendor}'
>>> Mar  8 08:15:55 localhost udevd[2298]: add_to_rules: unknown key
>>> 'ATTRS{idProduct}'
>>> Mar  8 08:15:55 localhost udevd[2298]: add_to_rules: unknown key
>>> 'ATTRS{idVendor}'
>>> Mar  8 08:15:55 localhost udevd[2298]: add_to_rules: unknown key
>>> 'ATTRS{idProduct}'
>>> Mar  8 08:15:55 localhost udevd[2298]: add_to_rules: unknown key
>>> 'ATTRS{idVendor}'
>>> Mar  8 08:15:55 localhost udevd[2298]: add_to_rules: unknown key
>>> 'ATTRS{idProduct}'
>>> etc ...
>>>
>>> -- 
>> Cryptic? I'm surprised that these don't look a bit familiar to you by now.
>> ;) They're pretty much standard log messages. udevd[2298] is the name and
>> pid of the process that generated the message. udevd is the udev daemon.
>> add_to_rules appears to be a function of udevd, unknown key is the error
>> identifier, and ATTRS{id...} is the specific instance that caused the error.
>>
>> From the little I know, udev is something that dynamically builds the /dev/
>> tree in your system (used to be static). add_to_rules appears to be
>> something SELINUX related. SELINUX is a relatively new facility that adds
>> extended security capabilities to Linux. I'm guessing that udevd is trying
>> to create SELINUX attributes (ATTRS) for a particular device(s) and doesn't
>> understand what the various id's are, so these rules aren't being created
>> like they should be.
>>
>> I can't think of a reason why anyone would want/need to use SELINUX on a
>> laptop, but I'm sure someone will think of one. I'm betting that if you turn
>> off SELINUX that the messages will go away. See
>> http://www.crypt.gen.nz/selinux/disable_selinux.html for details.
>>
> ----
> Ubuntu doesn't have/offer SELinux - thus, there is nothing to turn off.
> 
> Craig
> 

Not exactly. It may not be installed by default, but it's available in
universe (http://packages.ubuntu.com/edgy/admin/selinux-basics). This is the
first ubuntu version that has it available. In edgy (6.10, what Larry's
running), selinux-basics is v0.2.6. In feisty (7.04), it's v0.3.0, so it
appears that there are already some fixes in store.

We don't know if selinux is installed in this case or not, that's a good
point. If not, what do you suppose might be causing the messages? What
'rules' does udev have that aren't selinux related? I've no idea.

-- 
-Eric 'shubes'