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Syslogd Overwhelming Your Computer?

If your Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) system is unexpectedly sluggish, logging might be the culprit. Run Activity Monitor (Applications/Utilities/ folder), and click the CPU column twice to get it to show most to least activity. If syslogd is at the top of the list, there's a fix. Syslogd tracks informational messages produced by software and writes them to the asl.db, a file in your Unix /var/log/ directory. It's a known problem that syslogd can run amok. There's a fix: deleting the asl.db file.

Launch Terminal (from the same Utilities folder), and enter these commands exactly as written, entering your administrative password when prompted:

sudo launchctl stop com.apple.syslogd

sudo rm /var/log/asl.db

sudo launchctl start com.apple.syslogd

Your system should settle down to normal. For more information, follow the link.

Visit Discussion of syslogd problem at Smarticus

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Published in TidBITS 60.
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06 May 1991 | Print Printer-Friendly Version of This Article

TechnoBITS/06-May-91

by Adam C. Engst Send Email to Author

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Compression is a hot field these days, with everyone trying to squeeze the last few bytes from a compressed file. A company called Iterated Systems might top them all though, with its compression board for PC-clones. The board can save a minute and a half of moving video images on a 1.4 MB floppy, and while that doesn't sound too impressive, multiply that up to 650 MB on a CD-ROM and you get about 10 hours of video. Iterated Systems's technique uses fractal transformations, essentially replacing bits with mathematical formulas. I'm beginning to think that everything relates to fractals...or was it marketing schemes? In any event, the hardware is required for compression, but decompression can be software only and can play video at 24 to 30 frames per second without hardware. Iterated System's best compression ratio so far is 500 to 1, but keep in mind that the fractal transformations are a lossless technology, unlike JPEG compression, which is lossy.

Related articles:
BYTE -- Feb-91, pg. 32

 

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