Resolving uptimeagent Daemon Messages

This article describes how to address the condition that causes a large number of messages, similar to those shown below, to appear in Linux or UNIX log files.

 
Jan 28 16:50:24 agent-host inetd[259]: [ID 317013 daemon.notice] uptimeagent[7325] from 165.4.9.253 53672
Jan 28 16:50:28 agent-host inetd[259]: [ID 317013 daemon.notice] uptimeagent[7676] from 165.4.9.253 53707
Jan 28 16:50:31 agent-host inetd[259]: [ID 317013 daemon.notice] uptimeagent[7870] from 165.4.9.253 53732

Details

These errors appear because the syslog tool on the agent system has been configured to log daemon.notice messages. This level of logging registers every connection to the agent system (i.e. the messages are logged each time the monitoring station polls the agent). For example, with a five-minute polling frequency, a message will appear in the log file every five minutes.

Workaround

Prevent the system from logging at this level of detail by choosing one of the following options:

• Edit the /etc/syslog.conf file to disable the daemon.notice messages.
• Edit the /etc/xinetd.d/uptimeagent file to change the logging level to a less verbose option than the level specified in the /etc/syslog.conf file. For example, specify the following in the /etc/xinetd.d/uptimeagent file:

  log_type = SYSLOG authpriv emerg
  

  This option will only log emerg messages to the log file instead of the option set in the /etc/syslog.conf file.

• Use a more flexible syslog tool (such as syslog-ng) that can be configured to filter out specific messages.
• On Solaris 10 systems, the uptimeagent SMF may need to be updated. Verify if tcp_trace is set to TRUE by running the following command: inetadm -l network/uptimeagent/tcp. If the tcp_trace value is set to TRUE, set it to false with the following command: inetadm -m network/uptimeagent/tcp tcp_trace=FALSE.