From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0 Description of problem: When restarting syslog via a "service syslog restart" command, the system reports syslog as a failure to restart. [root@xxx root]# service syslog restart Shutting down kernel logger: [ OK ] Shutting down system logger: [ OK ] Starting system logger: [FAILED] Starting kernel logger: [ OK ] [root@xxx root]# The problem appears to be in this line of /etc/init.d/syslog [ $RETVAL -eq 0 ] && touch /var/lock/subsys/syslog The $RETVAL can' be 0, so it can't touch /var/lock/subsys/syslog. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): initscripts-7.31.18.EL-1 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Upgrade to update 4 ES3. 2. Service syslog restart 3. Watch it say failed. (system is actually logging) Actual Results: Watch it say failed. (system is actually logging) Expected Results: [ OK ] Additional info: I don't have much other information, though I have seen this on at least 5 different machines. The problem could be in the function in /etc/init.d/functions.
Do the machines on which it failed have multiple CPUs ? You are using sysklogd-1.4.1-12.3 (rpm -q sysklogd) ? If so, I think this is a duplicate of bug 126223, which was fixed with sysklogd-1.4.1-22 . There was a race condition where syslogd's initial child could send SIGTERM to the parent before the parent had installed its SIGTERM handler - this handler tells the parent that the child is running OK - so the parent gets SIGTERM and exits with an error, producing the [ FAILED ] message, but the child is actually running OK . The latest version of syslogd is sysklogd-1.4.1-26_EL3, which is currently undergoing QA testing and should be in RHEL-3-U5. Meanwhile, you can download from: http://people.redhat.com/~jvdias/sysklogd/RHEL-3 Please try this version - I think it should fix your problem.
Does the problem still exist?
This bug is filed against RHEL 3, which is in maintenance phase. During the maintenance phase, only security errata and select mission critical bug fixes will be released for enterprise products. Since this bug does not meet that criteria, it is now being closed. For more information of the RHEL errata support policy, please visit: http://www.redhat.com/security/updates/errata/ If you feel this bug is indeed mission critical, please contact your support representative. You may be asked to provide detailed information on how this bug is affecting you.