[syslog-ng] Constant syslog-ng startup message

[chris packham]

On Thu, 2009-03-26 at 15:56 -0400, srainville at videotron.ca wrote:
> syslog-ng keeps logging the following message. I installed it using
> the HEAD RPM for Linux RHEL4. Is there a problem with the startup, or
> just a message that can be ignored?
> 
> Mar 26 15:30:16 testserver syslog-ng[22090]: syslog-ng starting up;
> version='3.0.1+binpkg4'
> Mar 26 15:30:18 testserver syslog-ng[22092]: syslog-ng starting up;
> version='3.0.1+binpkg4'
> Mar 26 15:30:20 testserver syslog-ng[22094]: syslog-ng starting up;
> version='3.0.1+binpkg4'
> Mar 26 15:30:21 testserver syslog-ng[22095]: syslog-ng starting up;
> version='3.0.1+binpkg4'
> Mar 26 15:30:22 testserver syslog-ng[22097]: syslog-ng starting up;
> version='3.0.1+binpkg4'
> Mar 26 15:30:23 testserver syslog-ng[22098]: syslog-ng starting up;
> version='3.0.1+binpkg4'
> Mar 26 15:30:24 testserver syslog-ng[22099]: syslog-ng starting up;
> version='3.0.1+binpkg4'
> Mar 26 15:30:25 testserver syslog-ng[22100]: syslog-ng starting up;
> version='3.0.1+binpkg4'
> Mar 26 15:30:26 testserver syslog-ng[22101]: syslog-ng starting up;
> version='3.0.1+binpkg4'
> Mar 26 15:30:28 testserver syslog-ng[22103]: syslog-ng starting up;
> version='3.0.1+binpkg4'
> Mar 26 15:30:29 testserver syslog-ng[22104]: syslog-ng starting up;
> version='3.0.1+binpkg4'

That looks like either multiple instances of syslog-ng are being started
or its being stopped and started multiple times ('ps | grep syslog-ng'
should tell you which). 

Either way it's probably not good. At best its adding unnecessary system
load, at worst its losing messages.

Does RHEL4 use upstart or some other special init system that tries to
keep things running if they exit? You may see this kind of thing if
there was an error in your config file which would cause syslog-ng to
exit only to be re-started by init.