Bug#399335: kdm: spews almost 2GB of xserver logs into log, per day

[Eduard Bloch <blade@debian.org>]

Package: kdm
Version: 4:3.5.5a.dfsg.1-1
Severity: grave

Hello,

I recently discovered that my root partition was full. The reason was
not really clear, since there were over 3gb free. I found that kdm.log
files are full of crap: billions of duplicated lines, apparently comming
from X server but stored there. Example:

(**) RADEON(0): RADEONSaveScreen(2)
(**) RADEON(0): RADEONSaveScreen(2)
(many thousands of that)
Freeing resource id=40207B4A which isn't there.
Freeing resource id=40207B4A which isn't there.
(many millions of that)

If I look at the time stamp, I see that RADEONSaveScreen lines are added
even now, while I am logged into X trough kdm already.

Seriously, upstream should think about adding a simple filter for
duplicates, like syslog does. Or not log the messages at all, or collect
them in chunks and not store more than eg. one MB. Or both.

Eduard.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 4.0
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.18-2-486
Locale: LANG=de_DE.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=de_DE.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)

Versions of packages kdm depends on:
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0]  1.5.8             Debian configuration management sy
ii  kdebase-bin            4:3.5.5a.dfsg.1-1 core binaries for the KDE base mod
ii  kdebase-data           4:3.5.5a.dfsg.1-1 shared data files for the KDE base
ii  kdelibs4c2a            4:3.5.5a.dfsg.1-3 core libraries and binaries for al
ii  libc6                  2.3.6.ds1-8       GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libgcc1                1:4.1.1-19        GCC support library
ii  libpam-runtime         0.79-4            Runtime support for the PAM librar
ii  libpam0g               0.79-4            Pluggable Authentication Modules l
ii  libqt3-mt              3:3.3.7-1         Qt GUI Library (Threaded runtime v
ii  libstdc++6             4.1.1-19          The GNU Standard C++ Library v3
ii  libx11-6               2:1.0.3-2         X11 client-side library
ii  libxau6                1:1.0.1-2         X11 authorisation library
ii  libxdmcp6              1:1.0.1-2         X11 Display Manager Control Protoc
ii  libxtst6               1:1.0.1-5         X11 Testing -- Resource extension 
ii  xbase-clients          1:7.1.ds-3        miscellaneous X clients

Versions of packages kdm recommends:
ii  logrotate                     3.7.1-3    Log rotation utility

-- debconf information:
  kdm/stop_running_server_with_children: false
* shared/default-x-display-manager: kdm
  kdm/daemon_name: /usr/bin/kdm