The "username" last message repeated 9 times. And then it repeats again, and again, and again.
What is that suppose to mean though? Can you give us an example of some sort? Don't assume that we also have the same problem and thus know what you're talking about
So something appears on your screen. Are you logged onto the console?
v0? (use the
tty
command to find out)? Because that can be easily explained, just take a look at a default
/etc/syslog.conf:
Code:
*.err;kern.warning;auth.notice;mail.crit /dev/console
See what I mean? Every error, every kernel warning, every message related to authentication and critical mail messages will get relayed to and thus shown on the console.
If this is what's happening to you then the solution is very simple: switch to the second console. So: alt-f2, then use that to log on. You'll end up on
v1 which isn't the main console which means no messages will be dumped there.
However, I have an even more elegant solution, one which I use on most of my servers and my laptop alike: a logging tty. So: no (or very few) messages get sent to the console and most only find their way onto v7.
So:
- Edit /etc/ttys and uncomment (don't remove!) the ttyv7 line.
- This will prevent you from logging onto the system on v7, so: alt-f7.
- Edit /etc/syslog.conf and change /dev/console into /dev/ttyv7.
Now, changes in
ttys aren't instant as far as I remember so it's probably easiest to reboot. Though killing
getty might also do the trick. Of course if you do things manually also restart
syslogd.
The result will be that every nasty intruding message now gets sent onto the other virtual console. Using alt-f7 will show you all the messages which the system received. On a server it might be useful to also store all of this in a file of some sort, there's an example entry for
/var/log/console which you might like to use.
For example, this is what my server uses:
Code:
*.err;mail.crit /dev/console
*.err;kern.warning;auth.notice;mail.crit /dev/ttyv7
Oh: and if the intruding messages where bright white then those are kernel logs. There's probably a
sysctl option to turn those off but I have no idea from mind which one.