Author Topic: SYSLOGD - stopped working...SYSxxxx, but why?  (Read 106 times)

Dariusz Piatkowski

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SYSLOGD - stopped working...SYSxxxx, but why?
« on: March 15, 2026, 11:44:31 pm »
I have been using syslogd/2 v2.01 (courtesy of Michael Greene) for SYSLOG functionality over several years now. All working great, some stuff is logged into my \tmp\log directory, a good chunk goes to my NAS box as well which is an aggregate of various LOGs from across various machines on my LAN.

Once a year I roll-over my various LOGs and file last year's into the ARCHIVE folder and carry on with the new year.

Yeah...so I'm a little late to the '2026 party', LOL, sure...but I'm filing stuff away and "lo' and behold" but my SYSLOG.LOG ended back on Dec 18th (there is an entry posted each time I re-boot), and indeed several other LOGs, such as SMARTD.LOG fail to show anything past Dec-24th.

Hmm???  :o

So off I go investigating, turns out that my POPUPLOG.OS2 file starts showing SYSLOGD.EXE failing around Jan-10th, 2026...which presumably means that something has occured between Dec-24th and Jan-10th which eventually caused SYSLODG to die each and every time I attempt to start it up.

Specifically, POPUPLOG.OS2 shows:
Code: [Select]
03-15-2026  16:59:02  SYS3175  PID 0089  TID 0003  Slot 00cf
G:\TCPIP\BIN\SYSLOGD.EXE
c0000005
00023cd2
P1=00000001  P2=00000008  P3=XXXXXXXX  P4=XXXXXXXX 
EAX=00000000  EBX=00000100  ECX=00000002  EDX=21000000
ESI=00000000  EDI=0004497c 
DS=0053  DSACC=f0f3  DSLIM=ffffffff 
ES=0053  ESACC=f0f3  ESLIM=ffffffff 
FS=150b  FSACC=00f3  FSLIM=00000030
GS=0000  GSACC=****  GSLIM=********
CS:EIP=005b:00023cd2  CSACC=f0df  CSLIM=ffffffff
SS:ESP=0053:001e6a88  SSACC=f0f3  SSLIM=ffffffff
EBP=001e6fe8  FLG=00010206

SYSLOGD.EXE 0002:00003cd2

...while CLI (syslogd -d) shows:

Code: [Select]
[G:\tcpip\bin]syslogd -d
Mar 15 16:59:02 syslogd: SYSLOGDMP: Running startup commands
Mar 15 16:59:02 syslogd: SYSLOGDMP: Hostname: NEUROBOX
Mar 15 16:59:02 syslogd: SYSLOGDMP: Base allocated memory
Mar 15 16:59:02 syslogd: SYSLOGIPC: IPC thread started
SYS1808:
The process has stopped.  The software diagnostic
code (exception code) is  0005.

Unfortunately both of these are pretty generic and so I cannot tell what may actually be failing today.

I removed the tcpipforward setting in my syslog, but that had no impact.

Any ideas on how I could troubleshoot this further?

Thanks!

Steven Levine

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Re: SYSLOGD - stopped working...SYSxxxx, but why?
« Reply #1 on: Today at 08:21:59 am »
Hi,

If appears you did something to your services file so that it no longer contains a valid syslog entry.

FWIW, Mike built his syslogd with Watcom and provided full source code.  You might want to consider modifying the code so that that it does not trap when GETSERVBYNAME returns NULL.

Steven

Dariusz Piatkowski

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Re: SYSLOGD - stopped working...SYSxxxx, but why?
« Reply #2 on: Today at 01:57:45 pm »
Hello Steven!

...If appears you did something to your services file so that it no longer contains a valid syslog entry...

BINGO...I did replace the regular SERVICES file with a Wireshark supplied one because that one was showing a much larger list of services and otherwise the format appeared to be the same, short of a comment '#' character denoting comments.

Specifically:

1) SUPPLIED
Code: [Select]
# To Boost the performace of Dynamic IP Servers ,We moved the DHCP/BINL
# Ports to the top of the File./*IC41013:--[Kishore Kumar Pillai] */
# Port Assignments:
#
# Keyword       Decimal    Description                     References
# -------       -------    -----------                     ----------
                  0/tcp    #Reserved
                  0/udp    #Reserved
#                          #Jon Postel <postel@isi.edu>
tcpmux            1/tcp    #TCP Port Service Multiplexer
tcpmux            1/udp    #TCP Port Service Multiplexer
#                          #Mark Lottor <MKL@nisc.sri.com>
compressnet       2/tcp    #Management Utility
compressnet       2/udp    #Management Utility
...
syslog            514/udp #
...

2) WIRESHARK
Code: [Select]
# This is a local copy of the IANA port-numbers file.
#
# Wireshark uses it to resolve port numbers into human readable
# service names, e.g. TCP port 80 -> http.
#
# It is subject to copyright and being used with IANA's permission:
# http://www.wireshark.org/lists/wireshark-dev/200708/msg00160.html
#

tcpmux              1/tcp # TCP Port Service Multiplexer [Mark_Lottor] [Mark_Lot
tcpmux              1/udp # TCP Port Service Multiplexer [Mark_Lottor] [Mark_Lot
compressnet         2/tcp # Management Utility
compressnet         2/udp # Management Utility
...
syslog          514/udp    #
...

...FWIW, Mike built his syslogd with Watcom and provided full source code.  You might want to consider modifying the code so that that it does not trap when GETSERVBYNAME returns NULL...

Indeed, I started to look at the code to understand where the SYS1808 with the "The software diagnostic
code (exception code) is  0005." is coming from. As best as I could tell the 'startup()' section in syslogd.c does this:

Code: [Select]
...
// ***** IPC Thread - setup and start *****
   //
   // Function to setup and start ICP thread.  Create SEM1/SEM2,
   // start thread, and wait for thread to set SEM1 signaling thread
   // running. SEM1 reset on exit/return
   if (DosCreateEventSem(IPCSEM1, &hevIPCSEM1, DC_SEM_SHARED, FALSE))
   {
      handleinternalmsg(STARTERROR_4, LOG_ERR);
      return(STARTERROR_5);
   }

   if (DosCreateEventSem(IPCSEM2, &hevIPCSEM2, DC_SEM_SHARED, FALSE))
   {
      handleinternalmsg(STARTERROR_5, LOG_ERR);
      return(STARTERROR_5);
   }
...

...but what I couldn't figure out is whether that "...exception code is  0005..." was in fact the result of STARTERROR_5 being posted.

So at the risk of this being a much bigger follow-up question: how exactly did you get from that SYS1808 to 'something is off with your SERVICES file'???

Seriously...I have no real OS/2 programming experience, but I've looked at various code snippets multiple times and have done some small stuff. However, trying to figure out how to DEBUG issues is an entirely different ballgame.