[newbie] Log tracing #1

[Ted Miller]

I am trying to figure out what is going on with some "anomalies" with my 2006 x86_64 install.  I know that the first place to start is usually with the logs, but there are so many of them. Hardware info: AMD3500 proc, 1G RAM, 3 SATA drives (software RAID 1 for sda & sdb, sdc is a backup, not mounted), nvidia nforce4 chipset, Gigabyte MB & graphics card (nvidia chipset) My thinking is, a good way to start is probably to start with the first errors that happen during the bootup process, and hope that if I get some of them straightened out, the rest of the setup will eventually fall into place. I looked in /var/log/kernel/errors, and found that it contains only 4 lines, as opposed to the pages in a log like /var/log/boot.log.  The lines that it bothers to put into the errors log are these: Feb 1 10:03:47 Office2 kernel: audit(1138788192.156:0): initialized I am clueless what that means, so somebody clue me in. Feb 1 10:03:47 Office2 kernel: device-mapper: dm-linear: Device lookup failed Feb 1 10:03:47 Office2 last message repeated 87 times Sounds like a software RAID call that failed?  What does it mean?  Repeating it 87 times seems like indication of a problem. Feb 1 10:03:47 Office2 kernel: eth1394: eth0: Could not allocate isochronous receive context for the broadcast channel I am guessing this has something to do with the 1394 port, and the fact that it assumes that I want to use that port for network connectivity, so it is sure I need a driver on that port.  I have told it not to start that driver automatically, but I assume it is testing something, and doesn't like what it sees. These errors all were logged in one second.  That second produced a couple of pages in the warning log, and several pages in the info log (all in the kernel directory). What does some of this mean, or am I looking in entirely the wrong place? Ted Miller