"init: /bin/syslogd respawning too fast" error

 

I get a "init: /bin/syslogd respawning too fast" error

This is from syslogd dieing and then restarting. This can happen for a few reasons:

• • read only file system - syslogd writes to a log file - if it fails creating this log file, it dies.
  • networking not built into the system - syslogd uses network sockets

To fix this error, you have a few choices:

• • Turn off syslogd
  • Mount the file system read/write
  • Turn back on networking in the kernel.

 

 

Hi Paul,

Here is the /dev/log entry on a platform that I'm using:

# ls -l log
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 12 Jul 13 2006 log -> /var/ tmp/log

It was created when the root file system was made in the romfs target of the vendors Makefile with something like this:

romfsinst -s /var/tmp/log /dev/log

Cheers

Matt

On 06/02/2007, at 4:33 AM, Paul Romero wrote:

Dear User Group:

This message is about an old problem I have not been able
to resolve. Namely, that logging error messages in /var/log/messages
does not work, and when one attempts to use syslogd for that purpose
"init: /bin/syslogd respawning too fast" is periodically displayed
on the console.

There have been a lot of suggestions about how to solve the problem
which I will outline below. However, I have tried them
and they don't work.  The main problem I have observed is that
the code references /dev/log which does not exist and in fact
can't be created because /dev is a read only file system !  Worse
yet, it can't be fixed by changing a .h file because the path
to /dev/log exists in multiple .h files and is hardcoded in
some .c files.

The solutions I have seen are basically as follows:

* Make /dev/log readable or link it to a readable path
  such as /var/log.