Computer cooking and cooking and cooking....

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Username : Date : Action : Comments [ close all ]
gooseme : 05/07/02 04:49 PM : Incident created -   Hi For a long time my linux box ran fine. I'd wake up in the morning, fire that puppy up and go about my business. A short while back however, I decided to give myself the works so I installed just about everything on the CD's plus stuff I'd accumulated from rpmfind.net. Lately (past few days), I fire it up and she cooks and cooks and cooks (seems like forever) for no apparent reason. I'l just be sitting there reading and all of a sudden the red HD light comes on and you might think I was trying to run a java applet on an old 386 the way that sucker grinds away. After about 2 minutes, she quiets down and everything goes fine for the day. What the heck???. - Cheers
Linegod_7611 : 05/07/02 05:49 PM : Reply received -   You might want to check '/var/log/messages' for errors. Or, when the problem starts, use: # tail -f /var/log/messages ------- Note: If this answer resolves your problem, please remember to close this question.
gooseme : 05/07/02 07:14 PM : More info provided -   Hey thank's LineGod! Ok, I just logged in as root and checked out "var/log/messages" and the message file is loaded to the hilt with various errors or references as to what the computer did or did'nt do at a particular time, etc. Anyway, there's a lot of stuff in there. Can I just delete that file or at least delete it's contents?...does my machine go through all of the entries in this file each time I start it up in the monrings?...is this why it grinds away for the first few minutes, etc?.
Linegod_7611 : 06/07/02 12:36 AM : Reply received -   That file is telling you what is going on in your system. All those errors are most likely the cause of your problem, not the error log itself. You can make a backup of that file (it should be backed up automagically every week by logrotate), and then see what new stuff is written to it, and clear the problems one at a time.
gooseme : 28/07/02 07:48 PM : Incident closed -

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