Re: leaky kernel ? ;)

[wakko () WTOWER COM (Wakko Ellington Warner-Warner III)]

On Wed, 29 Dec 1999, mIV wrote:

> OK, there's RH 6.1 on 2.2.13. Let's take a look at /var/log/messages:
>
> and so on ... Do you know where are these strings from ? I'll tell ya.
> It's all from my mail fetched by fetchmail (via PPP). OK, these were
> strings but we have also sth like this:
>
> Dec 13 22:24:38 pentium kernel: 40 21 4C BB F4 6F 5F DD @!L..o_.
> Dec 13 22:24:39 pentium kernel: C4 41 74 3F BD 54 47 B9 .At?.TG.
>
> That's not good when some net packets are dumped to system logs, is it ?
> Is it a bug ? If so, is it known to kernel developers ?

Check your pppd options.  From the pppd(8) manpage:

       debug  Enables connection debugging facilities.   If  this
              option  is given, pppd will log the contents of all
              control packets sent  or  received  in  a  readable
              form.   The  packets are logged through syslog with
              facility daemon and level debug.  This  information
              can   be   directed   to   a  file  by  setting  up
              /etc/syslog.conf    appropriately     (see     sys-
              log.conf(5)).

and, probably what you've got enabled somewhere:

       kdebug n
              Enable  debugging  code  in  the  kernel-level  PPP
              driver.   The  argument  n is a number which is the
              sum of the following values: 1  to  enable  general
              debug  messages,  2 to request that the contents of
              received packets be printed, and 4 to request  that
              the contents of transmitted packets be printed.  On
              most systems, messages printed by  the  kernel  are
              logged  by  syslog(1)  to a file as directed in the
              /etc/syslog.conf configuration file.

HTH.

- A.P.

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