[syslog-ng] POLLERR occurred while idle

Tom Ritter tom at ritter.vg
Mon Jul 5 05:31:49 CEST 2010


I'm getting a large volume of messages that look like this:

23:09:53 hn syslog-ng[30]: POLLERR occurred while idle; fd='13'
23:09:54 hn syslog-ng[30]: POLLERR occurred while idle; fd='14'
23:09:55 hn syslog-ng[30]: POLLERR occurred while idle; fd='13'
23:09:56 hn syslog-ng[30]: POLLERR occurred while idle; fd='14'
23:09:57 hn syslog-ng[30]: POLLERR occurred while idle; fd='13'
23:09:58 hn syslog-ng[30]: POLLERR occurred while idle; fd='14'
23:09:59 hn syslog-ng[30]: POLLERR occurred while idle; fd='13'

I have no idea what they are but they won't stop =(

I looked at the file descriptors:

# ls /proc/30/fd
total 0
lr-x------ 1 root root 64 Jul  4 23:21 0 -> /dev/null
l-wx------ 1 root root 64 Jul  4 23:21 1 -> /dev/null
l-wx------ 1 root root 64 Jul  4 23:21 10 -> /var/log/messages/messages
l-wx------ 1 root root 64 Jul  4 23:21 11 -> /var/log/hn/20100704.log
l-wx------ 1 root root 64 Jul  4 23:21 13 -> pipe:[28238824]
l-wx------ 1 root root 64 Jul  4 23:21 2 -> /dev/null
lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Jul  4 23:21 3 -> socket:[28238645]
l-wx------ 1 root root 64 Jul  4 23:21 4 -> pipe:[28238641]
lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Jul  4 23:21 5 -> socket:[28238650]
lr-x------ 1 root root 64 Jul  4 23:21 6 -> /proc/kmsg
l-wx------ 1 root root 64 Jul  4 23:21 7 -> /var/log/syslog/syslog.log
l-wx------ 1 root root 64 Jul  4 23:21 8 -> /var/log/fw/important.log
l-wx------ 1 root root 64 Jul  4 23:21 9 -> /var/log/debug/debug.log

And I ran strace looking for fd's 13 and 14.  Here are some grep results:

strace.log.30964:open("/dev/null", O_WRONLY) = 14
----
strace.log.30962:poll([{fd=13, events=0}, {fd=3, events=POLLIN}, {fd=6,
events=POLLIN}, {fd=5, events=POLLIN}], 4, 0)
    = 0 (Timeout)
strace.log.30962:poll([{fd=13, events=POLLOUT}], 1, 0)   = 1 ([{fd=13,
revents=POLLOUT}])
strace.log.30962:poll([{fd=13, events=0}, {fd=3, events=POLLIN}, {fd=6,
events=POLLIN}, {fd=5, events=POLLIN}], 4, 29014) = 1 ([{fd=13,
revents=POLLERR}])
strace.log.30962:poll([{fd=13, events=0}, {fd=3, events=POLLIN}, {fd=6,
events=POLLIN}, {fd=5, events=POLLIN}], 4, 0) = 0 (Timeout)
strace.log.30962:poll([{fd=13, events=POLLOUT}], 1, 0) = 1 ([{fd=13,
revents=POLLOUT}])
strace.log.30962:poll([{fd=13, events=0}, {fd=3, events=POLLIN}, {fd=6,
events=POLLIN}, {fd=5, events=POLLIN}], 4, 27100) = 1 ([{fd=13,
revents=POLLERR}])
strace.log.30962:poll([{fd=13, events=0}, {fd=3, events=POLLIN}, {fd=6,
events=POLLIN}, {fd=5, events=POLLIN}], 4, 0) = 0 (Timeout)
strace.log.30962:poll([{fd=13, events=POLLOUT}], 1, 0)   = 1 ([{fd=13,
revents=POLLOUT}])
strace.log.30962:poll([{fd=13, events=0}, {fd=3, events=POLLIN}, {fd=6,
events=POLLIN}, {fd=5, events=POLLIN}], 4, 25102) = 1 ([{fd=13,
revents=POLLERR}])
strace.log.30962:poll([{fd=13, events=0}, {fd=3, events=POLLIN}, {fd=6,
events=POLLIN}, {fd=5, events=POLLIN}], 4, 0)
    = 0 (Timeout)
strace.log.30962:poll([{fd=13, events=POLLOUT}], 1, 0)   = 1 ([{fd=13,
revents=POLLOUT}])
strace.log.30962:poll([{fd=13, events=0}, {fd=3, events=POLLIN}, {fd=6,
events=POLLIN}, {fd=5, events=POLLIN}], 4, 23291) = 1 ([{fd=13,
revents=POLLERR}])
strace.log.30962:poll([{fd=13, events=0}, {fd=3, events=POLLIN}, {fd=6,
events=POLLIN}, {fd=5, events=POLLIN}], 4, 0)
    = 0 (Timeout)
strace.log.30962:poll([{fd=13, events=POLLOUT}], 1, 0)   = 1 ([{fd=13,
revents=POLLOUT}])
strace.log.30962:poll([{fd=13, events=0}, {fd=3, events=POLLIN}, {fd=6,
events=POLLIN}, {fd=5, events=POLLIN}], 4, 21398) = 1 ([{fd=13,
revents=POLLERR}])
strace.log.30962:poll([{fd=13, events=0}, {fd=3, events=POLLIN}, {fd=6,
events=POLLIN}, {fd=5, events=POLLIN}], 4, 0)
    = 0 (Timeout)
strace.log.30962:poll([{fd=13, events=POLLOUT}], 1, 0) = 1 ([{fd=13,
revents=POLLOUT}])
strace.log.30962:poll([{fd=13, events=0}, {fd=3, events=POLLIN}, {fd=6,
events=POLLIN}, {fd=5, events=POLLIN}], 4, 19680) = 1 ([{fd=13,
revents=POLLERR}])
strace.log.30962:poll([{fd=13, events=0}, {fd=3, events=POLLIN}, {fd=6,
events=POLLIN}, {fd=5, events=POLLIN}], 4, 0)
    = ? ERESTART_RESTARTBLOCK (To be restarted)
strace.log.30962:poll([{fd=13, events=POLLOUT}], 1, 0)   = 1 ([{fd=13,
revents=POLLOUT}])
strace.log.30962:poll([{fd=13, events=0}, {fd=3, events=POLLIN}, {fd=6,
events=POLLIN}, {fd=5, events=POLLIN}], 4, 18183) = 1 ([{fd=13,
revents=POLLERR}])
strace.log.30962:poll([{fd=13, events=0}, {fd=3, events=POLLIN}, {fd=6,
events=POLLIN}, {fd=5, events=POLLIN}], 4, 0)
    = 0 (Timeout)
strace.log.30962:poll([{fd=13, events=POLLOUT}], 1, 0)   = 1 ([{fd=13,
revents=POLLOUT}])
strace.log.30962:poll([{fd=13, events=0}, {fd=3, events=POLLIN}, {fd=6,
events=POLLIN}, {fd=5, events=POLLIN}], 4, 16697) = 1 ([{fd=13,
revents=POLLERR}])
strace.log.30962:poll([{fd=13, events=0}, {fd=3, events=POLLIN}, {fd=6,
events=POLLIN}, {fd=5, events=POLLIN}], 4, 0) = 0 (Timeout)
strace.log.30962:poll([{fd=13, events=POLLOUT}], 1, 0)   = 1 ([{fd=13,
revents=POLLOUT}])
strace.log.30962:poll([{fd=13, events=0}, {fd=3, events=POLLIN}, {fd=6,
events=POLLIN}, {fd=5, events=POLLIN}], 4, 15221) = 1 ([{fd=13,
revents=POLLERR}])
-----
strace.log.30962:fcntl(13, F_GETFL)             = 0x1 (flags O_WRONLY)
strace.log.30962:fcntl(13, F_SETFL, O_WRONLY|O_NONBLOCK)
             = 0
strace.log.30962:write(13, "POLLERR occurred while idle; fd="..., 168)
                             = 168
strace.log.30962:close(13) = 0



I mussed some pid's around to try and format the email as best I could.

Can anyone suggest more debugging steps, or what might be causing this?
 I haven't seen this error elsewhere, the search results are barren,
except the for commit logs.

I'm on gentoo using 3.1.1:

# syslog-ng --version
syslog-ng 3.1.1
Installer-Version: 3.1.1
Revision:
ssh+git://bazsi@git.balabit//var/scm/git/syslog-ng/syslog-ng-ose--mainline--3.1#master#8747d74491eac3fdf5052194f47a68e659633ca9
Compile-Date: Jun 17 2010 13:37:53
Enable-Threads: off
Enable-Debug: off
Enable-GProf: off
Enable-Memtrace: off
Enable-Sun-STREAMS: off
Enable-Sun-Door: off
Enable-IPv6: on
Enable-Spoof-Source: off
Enable-TCP-Wrapper: on
Enable-SSL: on
Enable-SQL: off
Enable-Linux-Caps: off
Enable-Pcre: on


-tom


More information about the syslog-ng mailing list