how do I suppress system messages?

[Lynette Tillner]

I did this, and even did a reboot of the server but the messages haven't
stopped.  Since this is a machine managed by my ISP (I don't have a full
dedicated server, just a Virtual Private Server with 2 gig of disk space)
could something be overriding my syslog.conf file?  I looked at rc.conf but
didn't see anything that I thought was appropriate to comment out.

Also, I can't switch to another tty because my only access is remote --- I
don't have console access.

Thanks!
Lynette

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Eric Crist" <ecrist at secure-computing.net>
To: "Kevin Glick" <keving at sbfnet.com>
Cc: "'Lynette Tillner'" <ltillner at avs-1.com>;
<freebsd-questions at freebsd.org>
Sent: Wednesday, October 13, 2004 12:12 PM
Subject: Re: how do I suppress system messages?

On Oct 13, 2004, at 2:08 PM, 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
>
>
> -----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


You can also disable this by editing the file /etc/syslog.conf and
commenting out the following line:

*.err;kern.debug;auth.notice;mail.crit          /dev/console

Simply put a # in front, save the file, and restart syslogd by doing
the following as root:
# killall -1 syslogd

HTH
-----
Eric F Crist
Secure Computing Networks