how do I suppress system messages?

[Kevin D. Kinsey, DaleCo, S.P.]

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-freebsd-newbies at freebsd.org
[mailto:owner-freebsd-newbies at freebsd.org] On Behalf Of Lynette Tillner
Sent: Wednesday, October 13, 2004 11:21 AM
To: freebsd-newbies at freebsd.org
Subject: how do I suppress system messages?

>>This is something that drives me crazy but I've not been able to find a way
>>to stop it. 

>>When I log into my FreeBSD 4.6 Web Server as root, I get messages from
>>sendmail that I can't suppress with dmesg.  They are a real pain because
>>they even come across the screen when I'm using VI to edit files and then I
>>can't figure out the line I was in the middle of editing, and end up doing a
>>:q! and starting over, very frustrating because we get tons of mail and it
>>seems like I can't do anything as root because of these messages. 

>>Is there a command that will suppress the messages?   I remember being able
>>to do that when I was working on an HP-UX system but haven't figured it out
>>under FreeBSD.

>>Thanks for any help!

>>Lynette


Kevin Glick wrote:

>Lynette,
>
>System messages print out to the console on tty0 only, by default.  If you
>want to use the console, switch to tty1 or above.  Do this by ALT+2(tty1),
>ALT+3(tty2), etc.
>When you're in Vi, and syslog prints across the screen, using CTRL+L will
>re-draw the screen, and remove the syslog messages.
>If you want to get rid of the messages altogether, look into disabling
>syslogd, via /etc/rc.conf.  (Man syslogd, or check /etc/defaults/rc.conf for
>syslogd.
>
>Kevin Glick
>ITS Manager
>Sterling Business Forms
>keving at sbfnet.com
>  
>

Some good advice here, for sure, but does she really want to disable
syslogd, unless the only service she really cares about on this
box is http (and unless she'd disabled a lot of stuff, it probably
isn't...)??  IIRC, in /etc/syslog.conf, instruction is given on how
to redirect ttyv0 output to /var/log/console.log, which seems a
better option.  Disabling syslogd would ((probably)) stop logging
of some useful information (like auth.info) as well as the sendmail
output that's "driving her crazy". Disclaimer: I'm not an expert,
and don't [exactly] play one on questions@ ...

My $0.02,

Kevin Kinsey