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Re: Log File or Available Space Monitoring



On Wed, Aug 10, 2011 at 10:56:44PM +0300, David Baron wrote:
> This is a not-so-sporadic problem: USB mouse begins spewing errors and these 
> grow the syslog and daemon.log files until /var is full. At this point, the 
> filesystem journal and the mail system are crippled. One must remove these two 
> files and reboot. The bootup check will remove an inode or so and things will 
> play.
> 
> I would like some daemon to monitor either selected log files or the available 
> space and alert before this gets out of hand. At this point, automatic 
> execution of a script or manual deletion can be done before its "too late."

On my old P1 system 'df /' takes 10 mS where as 'ls -l /var/log/messages'
takes 20 mS. Either of those could be scripted to run from a crontab and
give warning about a drastic change in file size or free space. The 
question that comes to my mind is how fast does /var fill up when you
have a driver continually spewing warnings? I shouldn't be surprised if
it happened pretty quickly. Can you keep an extra window open to watch the
pertinent log so that you will notice when it suddenly starts to scroll?

I'd suggest you:
    A) try another usb port,
    B) try another mouse,
    C) clean the usb connections (many usb ports connect to the motherboard
via a cable, power down the computer, disconnect the cable from the mobo,
spray WD40 into the connector, slide on and off the pins on the mobo a few
times to clean off the pins, allow the WD40 to dry(5 min), re-assemble all
and cross your fingers.
    If you don't know about how to protect your exposed electronics from
ESD damage, ignore this step or get educated help.

G'luck,
Mike
-- 
Satisfied user of Linux since 1997.
O< ascii ribbon campaign - stop html mail - www.asciiribbon.org


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