[ydl-gen] Syslog question regarding mysterious shutdowns

[Stephen Harker]

A minor addition to Derick's comments:

> > I have an xserve G5 running YDL 4.1 (I'm pretty sure, can't
> > find a way to check this easily nor can I remember, but did a
> > package search and that is what came up).  
> 
> To find out what your system is running, just open a terminal
> and do:

You can also do:

cat /etc/yellowdog-release 
Yellow Dog Linux release 6.2 (Pyxis)

The file /etc/yellowdog-release contains the release information.
There is a similar file in many (most?) other releases.  However, this
is more system specific.  Derick's suggestion is more general.

> > It started gracefully shutting down on me every once in awhile
> > for no rhyme or reason that I can see (I say graceful because
> > I've encountered no signs of a crash, such as an inconsistent
> > filesystem).
> > 
> > I can't find anything in the logs regarding why it is shutting
> > down.  My conclusion is that syslogd is not saying anything
> > about the shutdown to /var/log/messages or anything else
> > under /var/log/*

You can increase the amount of information stored in log files.  I
would only consider this if you don't find the problem with the
suggestions given by Derick.  An example of increasing/altering lot
information is given in
<http://linux.about.com/od/commands/l/blcmdl5_syslogc.htm>. Alternatively,
although old I based my modifications on
<http://tldp.org/REF/ls_quickref/QuickRefCard.pdf> and have in
/etc/syslog.conf:

# Monitor all kernel messages
kern.*                                                  /var/log/kernlog

I don't recall what the default setting is, but if kernel messages
aren't being logged it can be worth setting this even if only until
you can see whether there is a problem reported in the kernel log and
not in other logs.

-- 
Stephen Harker                           s.harker at adfa.edu.au
PEMS                
UNSW at ADFA