Bug#118856: This is no xconsole problem
Hello,
I found your bugreport[1] in Debian BTS. You should be known, about two
facts:
1. there is no xconsole problem
2. there is no easy and effective workaround
Recommendation to package maintainer:
- close this bug unresolved, or
- tag as wontfix, or
- mention this case in documentation/README and close bug
Technical details.
There is a special file, type named fifo, created in /dev directory. Syslog
writes to this file using entry:
<what> |/dev/xconsole
There is possible to write to named fifos only when there is process opening
this fifo for reading. In any other case write() hangs up or, in non-blocking
mode, returns -1 and sets EAGAIN. Syslog, on startup, opens all output files
for writing. Because there is no reader process connected to /dev/xconsole
write() fails, data are buffered. This buffer has a fixed size. If you are
trying to write to this fifo more data than its capacity then some data are
lost.
Regards
Artur
PS. Of course you can patch syslog to allocate memory for this buffer
dynamically, but you can exhaust all your available memory when you
boot your server and you do not open xconsole.
[1] http://bugs.debian.org/118856
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