Huge Log files in private/var/log/DiagnosticMessages

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BennyB1984 Author

Level 1

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Huge Log files in private/var/log/DiagnosticMessages

Dear Friends,

I recently noticed gigabytes of memory disappearing at a time and today ran Disk Inventory X. I discovered that my log files have recently exploded. There are multiple 500 mb files, 2 1.6 gb files, and a 2.2 gb file. Altogether these files are nearly 10 gb which is a lot of space to go missing. I opened one of them in console and essentially see the same thing repeating, but I have not idea what it is. I'll copy a portion of it on here for your take. Thanks much for your help!

27874 : <CFString 0x36e34 [0xa01e3ee0]>{contents = "hidden searchrem"}
27875 : <CFString 0x36e34 [0xa01e3ee0]>{contents = "hidden searchrem"}
27876 : <CFString 0x36e34 [0xa01e3ee0]>{contents = "hidden searchrem"}
27877 : <CFString 0x36e44 [0xa01e3ee0]>{contents = "scan DFS channels"}

Take care, Benjamin

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.1)

Posted on Nov 2, 2009 7:35 AM

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Answer 1

Nov 2, 2009 9:22 AM in response to BennyB1984

You need to know which program is having the problem. Open Console, if necessary click the Log List icon in the toolbar so you can see the logs, the second group is Diagnostic Information. I have one report per day, and they are all in the 10 to 200KB range. When I click the Diagnostic Messages I can see which program has made the report. Thus the most recent entry I see is this:

11/1/09 1 Nov 10:31:47 AM Software Update[394] SWU: scan found 1 products:
061-5337
com.apple.message.uuid: 97BBFA5B-E652-4164-98B6-9DB7FD67F4C3
com.apple.message.domain: com.apple.SoftwareUpdate.time.scan
com.apple.message.signature: SUCCESS: http://swscan.apple.com/
com.apple.message.result: success
com.apple.message.value: 26.46464
com.apple.message.value2: 692.856
com.apple.message.signature2: Software Update
com.apple.message.signature3: SUScanResultCode, 1

The first line tells which program is sending the report: in this case it is Software Update. You need to know what is sending the report before we can figure out what is wrong and thus what to do to fix it. Of course, with multi-GB files Console may choke and be unable to display anything. If that happens you may need to remove some of the huge log files and then relaunch Console and try again. You'll need to authenticate to remove any files, so you have to be in you admin account.
Francine

Francine
Schwieder

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Answer 2

BennyB1984 Author

Level 1

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Nov 3, 2009 11:18 AM in response to Francine Schwieder

Here is a sample of one of the files. It doesn't look exactly like yours, but hopefully it is sufficient to identify the problem:

ASL DB

Message was edited by: BennyB1984

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Answer 3

BennyB1984 Author

Level 1

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Nov 3, 2009 11:19 AM in response to BennyB1984

ASL DB

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Answer 4

BennyB1984 Author

Level 1

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Nov 3, 2009 11:22 AM in response to BennyB1984

Macintosh-3

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Answer 5

BennyB1984 Author

Level 1

0 points

Nov 3, 2009 11:23 AM in response to BennyB1984

com.apple.airport.autojoin.scan - failure - activepassive_broadcastscan (0.000393)

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Answer 6

cellist

Level 1

4 points

Nov 20, 2009 11:44 PM in response to BennyB1984

I have the answer to my asl full disk problem. This article gives a full professional account and solution to the problem!

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10329979-263.html?tag=mfiredir

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