Strange ipfw messages in /var/log/messages

[Sascha Wildner]

Matthew Dillon wrote:

    I have no idea ... it kinda looks like ipfw is trying to log
    something but it's virtually unreadable.  Are you loading ipfw
    as a module?  Maybe the module is out of date with the kernel.
No, IPFIREWALL and IPFIREWALL_VERBOSE are compiled into the kernel. 
kernel, modules and world were recompiled just a few days ago.

    I am guessing you have 'log' directives in your ipfw.conf 
    somewhere and that the log messages are related to those
    directives.
I do have 'log' directives in my ipfw.conf and 99.9% of the time 
filtered packets are logged correctly to /var/log/security but somehow a 
few of them are trashed and have the wrong syslog facilities and levels 
(e.g., kern.crit or user.err instead of the normal security.info). Hence 
the wrong log file (/var/log/messages instead of /var/log/security).

I have the feeling that the same thing that's trashing the log messages 
 is also responsible for the (seemingly) random assignment of syslog 
facility and level. Maybe some sort of overrun? There was pretty much 
firewall activity at some of the times where the misdirected logs 
occured. The machine is a 400MHz PII.

Regards,
Sascha
--
http://yoyodyne.ath.cx