[syslog-ng] syslog-ng stalls system

[Balazs Scheidler]

On Wed, 2006-05-17 at 16:33 +0200, Mario Aeby wrote:
> Hi
> 
> I've ran into serious problems yesterday with my Debian server and 
> finally was able to nail down the problem to syslog-ng and/or the 
> logging subsystem (or whatever it is called). I first noticed troubles 
> after I did a apt-get install, which hang while installing ssl-cert due 
> to a failure to create a group (connected to the symptoms mentioned 
> below).
> 
> Symptoms:
> - a growing number of unterminated /USR/SBIN/CRON processes (strace: 
> "connect(7, {sa_family=AF_FILE, path="/dev/log"}, 16")
> - unable to 'su <user>' (Ctrl-C to return to shell)
> - unable to establish a ssh connection (terminal hangs after entering 
> password, sshd <defunct> in processes)
> - unable to login physically at the server itself ("You have new mail", 
> but no command line, Ctrl-C to return to the login screen)
> - when logged in prior the failures, either 'shutdown' nor 'reboot' 
> have any effect (system must be shut down by /etc/init.d/reboot stop)
> - no new entries in /var/log/cron.log or /var/log/syslog

Syslog-ng is probably blocking on something, prominent cause
reading /proc/kmsg from multiple processes (multiple syslog-ng or klogd
and syslog-ng) _OR_ using 1.6.10 which was broken in this regard.

-- 
Bazsi