kern.log eating all available disk space

[Paper Pusher]

I'm the administrator of several ubnuntu 12.04 DTE systems. Two systems are giving me major headaches.

One is a 32-bit and the other is 64-bit. They each are running out of disk space.

The problem seems to be in the folder /var/log. The kern.log file and the kern.log.1 file is over 100 GB large.

What is going on? My personal assistants equivalent files are only about 700 kB large.

[Doug S]

Could you give us a snippet of some of the entries in the kern.log file. Maybe the output from:

tail -30 /var/log/kern.log

Something might be wrong, making many entries in the log file, or perhaps something is logging too much information causing the file to become excessively large.

If you are getting into difficulties with disk space, it would probably be O.K. to delete the older kern.log.1 file.

[2F4U]

As an immediate action, you should reconfigure the logrotation on those systems, so that logs don't grow that large:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LinuxLogFiles
http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2010/07/...les/#more-4826

However, I would also suggest that you find the reason for such large log files, because it indicates that something is wrong.

[Paper Pusher]

Thank you very much for all the advice. In a moment of panic since the system has run out of diskspace I deleted the kern.log file. The listing below is from the kern.log.1 file.

Sep 30 07:44:57 axel-O-E-M kernel: [69438.019364] usb 1-2: usbfs: process 1695 (demond_nscan) did not claim interface 3 before use
Sep 30 07:44:57 axel-O-E-M kernel: [69438.019422] usb 1-2: usbfs: process 1695 (demond_nscan) did not claim interface 3 before use
Sep 30 07:44:57 axel-O-E-M kernel: [69438.019479] usb 1-2: usbfs: process 1695 (demond_nscan) did not claim interface 3 before use
Sep 30 07:44:57 axel-O-E-M kernel: [69438.019536] usb 1-2: usbfs: process 1695 (demond_nscan) did not claim interface 3 before use
Sep 30 07:44:57 axel-O-E-M kernel: [69438.019598] usb 1-2: usbfs: process 1695 (demond_nscan) did not claim interface 3 before use
Sep 30 07:44:57 axel-O-E-M kernel: [69438.019655] usb 1-2: usbfs: process 1695 (demond_nscan) did not claim interface 3 before use
Sep 30 07:44:57 axel-O-E-M kernel: [69438.019706] usb 1-2: usbfs: process 1695 (demond_nscan) did not claim interface 3 before use
Sep 30 07:44:57 axel-O-E-M kernel: [69438.019754] usb 1-2: usbfs: process 1695 (demond_nscan) did not claim interface 3 before use
Sep 30 07:44:57 axel-O-E-M kernel: [69438.019803] usb 1-2: usbfs: process 1695 (demond_nscan) did not claim interface 3 before use
Sep 30 07:44:57 axel-O-E-M kernel: [69438.019855] usb 1-2: usbfs: process 1695 (demond_nscan) did not claim interface 3 before use
Sep 30 07:44:57 axel-O-E-M kernel: [69438.019903] usb 1-2: usbfs: process 1695 (demond_nscan) did not claim interface 3 before use
Sep 30 07:44:57 axel-O-E-M kernel: [69438.019952] usb 1-2: usbfs: process 1695 (demond_nscan) did not claim interface 3 before use
Sep 30 07:44:57 axel-O-E-M kernel: [69438.020039] usb 1-2: usbfs: process 1695 (demond_nscan) did not claim interface 3 before use
Sep 30 07:44:57 axel-O-E-M kernel: [69438.020093] usb 1-2: usbfs: process 1695 (demond_nscan) did not claim interface 3 before use
Sep 30 07:44:57 axel-O-E-M kernel: [69438.020144] usb 1-2: usbfs: process 1695 (demond_nscan) did not claim interface 3 before use
Sep 30 07:44:57 axel-O-E-M kernel: [69438.020206] usb 1-2: usbfs: process 1695 (demond_nscan) did not claim interface 3 before use
Sep 30 07:44:57 axel-O-E-M kernel: [69438.020265] usb 1-2: usbfs: process 1695 (demond_nscan) did not claim interface 3 before use
Sep 30 07:44:57 axel-O-E-M kernel: [69438.020322] usb 1-2: usbfs: process 1695 (demond_nscan) did not claim interface 3 before use
Sep 30 07:44:57 axel-O-E-M kernel: [69438.020379] usb 1-2: usbfs: process 1695 (demond_nscan) did not claim interface 3 before use
Sep 30 07:44:57 axel-O-E-M kernel: [69438.020437] usb 1-2: usbfs: process 1695 (demond_nscan) did not claim interface 3 before use

What do you think is going on?

[Doug S]

It seems a driver is misbehaving, and doing so at an extremely high repetition rate.
Do you have a Lexmark printer/scanner attached to the computer?
Have you tried to re-start everything?
I can only suggest to search around using search terms "demond-nscan" and "did not claim interface before use", although helpful information seems limited.

As a possible temporary patch to help limit file size, see answer 3 here.

[Paper Pusher]

yes both the computers have lexmark s315 printers attatched.
Is there something i should do in this situation?

[Doug S]

Well yes, you should try to fix the problem.
There seems to have been new firmware and/or drivers released in August, is that what you are using? If yes try to go back to the previous version.
Did you try to re-start everything yet? Power off the printer at first, and power it up later. Is there any correlation with the entries starting in kern.log?

[Paper Pusher]

Thank you for telling me about the problems with the Lexmark printer drivers. As I look at the Lexmark website, I see brand new drivers dating back to yesterday. They are for Ubunutu 11.04 only. Are these newer drivers then the ones I have currently installed are for Ubuntu 12.04?

Should I use these newly released drivers for 11.04?

How do I uninstall my current drivers?

[Paper Pusher]

I have found new drivers released 10-03-12 for my Lexmark s315 printer.

Question: How do I install the new drivers on my system? Do I uninstall the old drivers first? How do I uninstall the old drivers?