Kill syslogd. Is it safe?

[motulist]

Long story short, is it safe to completely delete the syslogd application off of my hard disk so that it can never be spawned again? And if it is safe, how do I delete it?

 

[Eidorian]

Long story short, is it safe to completely delete the syslogd application off of my hard disk so that it can never be spawned again? And if it is safe, how do I delete it?

Why would you want to delete the system log server?

 

[motulist]

Why would you want to delete the system log server?

Because there are a few programs out there that cause Leopard's syslogd to behave very badly. They cause leopard's syslogd to use up the majority of your CPU % and creating huge 30 MB system.log files which then also frequently cause bzip2 to spawn, another CPU choking process, just to keep compressing those huge log files down to size.

I barely care at all about reading my system log, so can I safely remove the program from my disk? If so, is the way to remove it deleting syslogd from my .usr/sbin ?

 

[Eidorian]

Because there are a few programs out there that cause Leopard's syslogd to behave very badly. They cause leopard's syslogd to use up the majority of your CPU % and creating huge 30 MB system.log files which then also frequently cause bzip2 to spawn, another CPU choking process, just to keep compressing those huge log files down to size.

I barely care at all about reading my system log, so can I safely remove the program from my disk? If so, is the way to remove it deleting syslogd from my .usr/sbin ?

I'm brushing up on the man page for the kill command. I suggest that you should to.

 

[motulist]

Perhaps kill is the incorrect term, I wasn't referring to an actual unix term when I said kill. If kill means quit or force quit, then I know that that's fine to do to syslogd. I don't want to force quit it, I want to murder it, make it disappear, make it sleep with the fishes. I want it off my system never to return again.

Whenever I read unix man pages I always wind up not learning anything useful because it seems like every manual page refers to 100 different unix terms that you need to know just in order to understand this one simple man page you're looking at. So in my experience I've found that man pages are pretty useless unless you're already reasonably well versed in unix.

 

[Eidorian]

Perhaps kill is the incorrect term, I wasn't referring to an actual unix term when I said kill. If kill means quit or force quit, then I know that that's fine to do to syslogd. I don't want to force quit it, I want to murder it, make it disappear, make it sleep with the fishes. I want it off my system never to return again.

Yeah I'm trying to find a way to kill it and prevent launchd from spawning it again.

I'm brilliant with hardware but I know just enough UNIX to keep my job.

 

[motulist]

I know just enough UNIX to keep my job.

Then that's all the UNIX you need to know, isn't it?

 

[motulist]

Gosh, this is bad. I'm feeling impetuous. I'm thinking about just trashing syslogd out of my usr/sbin folder and seeing what happens when I restart.

 

[motulist]

Gah! I can't stop myself! I'm gonna kill that application for good! Syslogd, tonight you meet your maker!

I'm gonna rename syslogd inside .usr/sbin and restart and see what happens. I figure if there are any problems I can just rename it back to syslogd. And even if it prevents OS X from starting up in full then I can still startup in single user mode are rename it back to syslogd.

I'm goin' in!

 

[Eidorian]

Gah! I can't stop myself! I'm gonna kill that application for good! Syslogd, tonight you meet your maker!

I'm gonna rename syslogd inside .usr/sbin and restart and see what happens. I figure if there are any problems I can just rename it back to syslogd. And even if it prevents OS X from starting up in full then I can still startup in single user mode are rename it back to syslogd.

I'm goin' in!

Yeah I was hoping you weren't going to delete it. Hopefully someone with more UNIX skills will be able to help you more.

 

[motulist]

Victory is mine!!!

I renamed syslogd, restarted, booted OS X perfectly, checked that the file hadn't been replaced by an automated backup, opened up the trigger application - and no syslogd spawned!!! Happy day!

Sometimes you take a risk and you get burned, other times you take a risk and you win big!

Thanks for the help anyway Eidorian.

 

[RHD]

Victory is mine!!!

I renamed syslogd, restarted, booted OS X perfectly, checked that the file hadn't been replaced by an automated backup, opened up the trigger application - and no syslogd spawned!!! Happy day!

Sometimes you take a risk and you get burned, other times you take a risk and you win big!

Thanks for the help anyway Eidorian.

Hi,

Is it still OK? because I'm with you I want this thing dead I don't care what it is it's killing my mac in the middle of a job.
If you don't post back with a horror story I'm following your process and the Evil Syslodg will sleep with the fishes.

 

[RHD]

OK,

Was too chicken to follow Motulist"s example, plus I couldn't find the file.

So I phoned Apple. After much bemusement as they hadn't come across this one, they told me to remove com.apple.syslogd.plist from the Launchdaemon file and restart.
Worked fine.
For now...

Thanks Motulist, I am not alone...

 

[RHD]

Oh look who's back!

I got a whole three hours of work in there.

Motulist if you read this please could you tell me where to find the file you renamed. I don't poke about in the system much and Spotlight or Finder aren't finding.

Thanks.