syslog

[Christian Briddon_1]

Hi there,

I have a 2 tiered question for you all.

Firstly, looking at our syslog file I see many errors that say "unknown command capa" or "unknown command uidl", both from popper. I have not got a clue what these errors are and would be greatful if you could tell me.

Secondly, how do I decide what gets logged in the syslog?

thanks in advance,

Christian Briddon

[Christopher McCray_1]

Hello,

As for the first question, my best guess is that there is a script that is executing invalid commands. Note the times and check your crontab. The syslog entries should be more specific; could you post an example of the entire message?

#2: /etc/syslog.conf is the file in which you decid what goes to what file, including syslog.

Make your changes and bounce syslogd

Hope this helps

Chris

[Tom Geudens]

Hi,
1. Looks mailrelated ... don't know for sure but is sendmail working ok on this system ?
2. Take a look in /etc/syslog.conf

Regards,
Tom

[Christopher McCray_1]

Hello again,
Here is a copy of a syslog.conf file

#
# syslogd configuration file.
#
# See syslogd(1M) for information about the format of this file.
#
auth.info /var/adm/auth.log
mail.debug /var/adm/syslog/mail.log
*.info;mail.none /var/adm/syslog/syslog.log
*.alert /dev/console
*.alert root
*.emerg *
# Start of lines added by NetWorker - DO NOT DELETE OR CHANGE THIS LINE
# installed by postinstall on Thu Jan 11 13:56:26 EST 2001
daemon.notice /dev/console
daemon.notice /nsr/logs/messages
daemon.notice operator
local0.notice /nsr/logs/summary
local0.alert root, operator
# End of lines added by NetWorker - DO NOT DELETE OR CHANGE THIS LINE
# Tivoli logfile adapter entry, ID=default
*.emerg;*.alert;*.crit;*.err;*.warning;*.notice;*.info /tmp/.tivoli/.tecad_logf
ile.fifo.scsdata1.default
# End of logfile adapter entry, ID=default

Enjoy

Chris

[Helen French]

My thoughts:

1) The unknown command can be coming from a script or application. Check the log files, time stamps, processes.. etc to find out the reason for that. The system trying to execute some unknown commands.

2) The /etc/syslog.conf file determines what get logged in the syslog file. This man page will give you all information you need:

# man syslogd

[Christian Briddon_1]

Thanks for the replies. The 2 lines in the syslog that are causing me concern are as follows:

Jul 9 14:55:19 n4000 popper: -ERR Unknown command: "capa".
Jul 9 14:55:19 n4000 popper: -ERR Unknown command: "uidl".

Sendmail works fine on this system. If any of you have any ideas I would be really greatful.

Cheers,

Christian

[Jeff Schussele]

Hi Christian,

Not sure, but it looks to me like you have a POP3 mail client trying to access the mail services when you don't have the server setup to service POP requests. OR a POP3 client is "misbehaving" & the server is simply logging these errors.
Is this server setup to handle POP3 clients?

Rgds,
Jeff

[Helen French]

Again, the 'popper' error normally comes from a POP3 server. Check and make sure that your settings and configuration are right.

[James R. Ferguson · Accepted solution]

Christian:

Another, standard way to make entries into the syslog is with 'logger'. Have a look at the man pages for more details. By example, in a script I could write:

# logger -t JRF -i I noted this!

Then, in 'syslog' we would find:

Jul 9 10:17:29 myhostname JRF[21839]: I noted this!

You might want to look for this kind of usage.

Regards!

...JRF...