why /var/log/messages went crazy?

[Michael Butash]

Things like that have always been hardware or acpi/bios errors for me, 
basically power management is broken.  You can remove whatever hardware 
you can (or disable it at a bios level), and try looking for a bios 
upgrade.  Maybe force APM mode and/or disable ACPI as JD said via kernel 
or bios.  Likely it won't be fixed by the vendor, as few, especially but 
a few years ago cared about linux enough to bother.  They usually fix it 
as a "driver" to windoze (sadly windoze probably works around crap 
hardware more), and call it *good enough*.

My hp has acpi errors like this (breaking suspend, various other 
shutdown problems under linux), where hp even said in a forum it's not 
worth their time to fix the bios with so little users reporting it a 
problem.  Boo hp, dell on the other hand will test/qualify/fix for linux 
on laptops and most hardware.  I won't buy or recommend hp laptops again.

-mb


On 09/14/2012 11:24 PM, JD Austin wrote:
> Try going into your bios and disabling ACPI (power management)
>
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/475704
>
> What I found helped out was going into my BIOS settings at boot-up time
> with F11. Then going into the Power tab and disabling ACPI. Then I still
> get about 10 errors like the one above when I startup, but at least its
> not the constant log filling that was happening before. I found some
> documentation listing the BIOS in the SR1700 series of Compaqs as broken.
>
> http://www.columbia.edu/~ariel/acpi/acpi_howto.txt
> <http://www.columbia.edu/%7Eariel/acpi/acpi_howto.txt>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 6:47 PM, <joe at actionline.com
> <mailto:joe at actionline.com>> wrote:
>
>     Several days ago, my /var/log/messages (and syslog and user.log) went
>     crazy adding entries so fast that my system crashed due to the root
>     partition filling up and giving a "no space left" message.
>
>     Thanks to help from plug and another forum, I was able to delete enough
>     files to regain enough file space to get the system restarted, and I
>     then
>     flushed the overloaded error message files and for several days, no
>     messages were added in /var/log/messages , syslog, and user.log for
>     about
>     a week. I was checking for new messages every day or two and all
>     seemed to
>     be okay until today, something caused the /var/log/messages and syslog
>     files to start filling up rapidly again.  This time I saved 1,000 of the
>     most recent entries in the messages file (several thousand messages were
>     added today), shut the system down, and rebooted.  After that, the
>     messages and syslog files slowed down to a trickle ... but how can I
>     figure out what is causing a flare-up like this?
>
>     I've posted the last 1,000 entries at this link:
>     http://www.upquick.com/temp/messages.last1000
>
>     As you can see, messages were being added at a rate of 15 to 20 per
>     second
>     before I shut the system down.  After reboot, messages were only added
>     every couple of minutes or so.
>
>     Can anyone please tell me what might be causing these message flare-ups
>     and how to stop it.
>
>     -rw-rw-r-- 1 root    273529 Sep 10 03:54 user.log.1
>     -rw-rw-r-- 1 root    364185 Sep 10 04:02 syslog.1
>     -rw-rw-r-- 1 root    361529 Sep 10 04:02 messages.1
>
>     -rw-rw-r-- 1 root   4755667 Sep 14 17:57 user.log
>     -rw-rw-r-- 1 root   5114200 Sep 14 17:57 syslog
>     -rw-rw-r-- 1 root   5092302 Sep 14 17:57 messages
>
>     -rw-rw-r-- 1 root   4756252 Sep 14 17:59 user.log
>     -rw-rw-r-- 1 root   5114992 Sep 14 17:59 syslog
>     -rw-rw-r-- 1 root   5093094 Sep 14 17:59 messages
>
>
>
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