OES2 Excessive NCP logging since the September 2010 Scheduled Maintenance update

  • 7007017
  • 08-Oct-2010
  • 27-Apr-2012

Environment

Novell Open Enterprise Server 2 (OES 2) Linux Support Pack 1
Novell Open Enterprise Server 2 (OES 2) Linux Support Pack 2

Situation

Since the release of the September 2010 Scheduled Maintenance update it was found that excessive logging of specific NCP actions is made to the /var/opt/novell/log/ncpserv.log file.

The various available NCP log levels determine how extensive the amount of logged NCP operations is that will take place, and which will be logged to the ncpserv.log file. Usually, changing values here to anything other than default is only required in troubleshooting scenarios.

What happened with the September Scheduled Maintenance patch release is that a piece of debugging code was left behind that is related to NCP file open and close events.

For example:
[! 2010-10-05 09:50:12] RemoveFromOpenFilesList: (Background, handle 144) -  /media/nss/DATA/userdata/.DS_Store
[! 2010-10-05 09:50:19] AddToOpenFilesList: entry already there! /media/nss/DATA/userdata/Tst/yast2-novell-common-2.13.8-124.2.noarch.rpm
[! 2010-10-05 09:50:21] RemoveFromOpenFilesList: (Background, handle 144) -  /media/nss/DATA/userdata/Tst/yast2-novell-common-2.13.8-124.2.noarch.rpm

There is no loss in functionality with this behavior, however on a moderate to busy server where high numbers of users access files on the file system, this may cause the ncpserv.log file to be flooded with unneeded messages and fill up the file /var file system.

Resolution

This has been reported to engineering.

When the amount of logging is not a concern in the environment this setting can be left as it currently is. When the logging volume is considered to extensive for the system and therefor a genuine concern, as a temporary workaround it is recommended to disable any NCP logging.

This can be achieved with for example using ncpcon in the following way. From a terminal type : "ncpcon set LOG_LEVEL=NOTHING" after which no longer NCP events will be logged to /var/opt/novell/log/ncpserv.log