>From: Jukka Marin <jmarin@pyy.jmp.fi>
>Date: Wed, 29 Jan 1997 14:45:41 +0200 (EET)

>I would like syslog to log only "fatal" errors, not things that are "normal".
>I don't think anyone would like the shells writing to syslog whenever a user
>mistypes a command, for example.

/etc/syslog.conf is the means by which you may express such
preferences.

>Also, why do some error conditions (like CD-ROM read errors) never time out?
>I don't want to reboot every time I type 'ls' in a shell and my CD-ROM drive
>can't read the disc.

That's probably a bug in the CDROM driver; you should collect all of
the details and send a PR.

>Why do some error messages go to the dmesg buffer (is that a 'kernel message
>buffer'?)?  Some examples of these are "arp - address XXXX overwritten by.."
>and some SCSI messages.  Yeah, and the serial port silo overflow messages.
>I find this annoying because the system configuration information gets lost
>sooner or later and I know no other way of getting it back but a reboot.

These are error messages produced by the kernel.  Note that the
message buffer read by dmesg is the same one used by the kernel
logging device (/dev/klog).  If kernel error messages did not appear
there, then syslogd would never see them.
-- 
Mike Long <mike.long@analog.com>     <URL:http://www.shore.net/~mikel>
VLSI Design Engineer         finger mikel@shore.net for PGP public key
Analog Devices, CPD Division          CCBF225E7D3F7ECB2C8F7ABB15D9BE7B
Norwood, MA 02062 USA       (eq (opinion 'ADI) (opinion 'mike)) -> nil