On Fri, 9 Jan 2004, Craig White wrote:

> On Fri, 2004-01-09 at 14:04, Jim wrote:
> > I am getting a lot of "MARK" messages on several of my Debian boxes.  I
> > have read that they are heartbeat type messages for syslog saying
> > everything is running well, but I have never noticed them until
> > recently, is this really normal or is there a problem with my system?
> >

Yes. MARK is normal.

See below.

> > Jan  9 10:51:16 sid -- MARK --
> > Jan  9 11:11:16 sid -- MARK --
> > Jan  9 11:31:16 sid -- MARK --
> > Jan  9 11:51:16 sid -- MARK --
> > Jan  9 12:11:16 sid -- MARK --
> > Jan  9 12:31:16 sid -- MARK --
> > Jan  9 12:51:16 sid -- MARK --
> > Jan  9 13:11:16 sid -- MARK --
> > Jan  9 13:31:16 sid -- MARK --
> > Jan  9 13:51:16 sid -- MARK --

Do you have anything else that should have been logged?

> I didn't think that there was a daemon capable of hitting the time
> exactly 20 minutes on the spot.

20 minutes is normal.

Look at the syslogd manpage and read about the -m interval option. (The
default interval for the mark timestamp is 20 minutes.)

   Jeremy C. Reed
   http://bsd.reedmedia.net/