Syslogd hogs your CPU.

Quick tip for all those Mac users out there. I spent a couple of hours with co-editor Simon Shand. I noticed his Mac was making an awfully loud air circulation. Because of my concerns that if left much longer, it would begin to erode part of the wall behind it, I decided to investigate.

We then went into ACTIVITY MONITOR (the OS X-equivalent of Window’s Task Manager) and discovered that SYSLOGD was taking up about 98% of the CPU. This also explains a blatant lack in performance-related areas.

After ‘Googling’ around for a couple of minutes, we came across a briliant blog written primarily by Julian Schrader (most likely explaining the blog name). Anyway, he pointed out that the most likely cause for it to use 100% of your CPU is a log database that is corrupt or generally too big. He provides a quick easy way to fix this. It consists of stopping the process, removing the database, and starting the process again (the database will be recreated when it starts again). Open up the Terminal Utility and enter the following:

sudo launchctl stop com.apple.syslogd
sudo rm /var/log/asl.db
sudo launchctl start com.apple.syslogd

Neither I or Julian will accept responsibility for anything that could possibly go wrong. By using this tip, you agree that this is at your own risk. You will be required to authenticate by entering your password, to allow you to use the ’sudo’ commands.

Another thing to do is find out what is filling up your log file. You may find, like minamitek on a large Mac-based forum, that one application is consistently throwing a large number of events to the logger. This will mean your log file can eventually be measured in GB, which I am sure you will agree, is bad.

Either way, enjoy your first day without an ear ache in a while. Oh and remember, regardless of your computer, if it suddenly becomes louder, I urge you to investigate, as your computer’s speed, temperature, power consumption and life-span will be affected. You may just have to clean out your clogged vents.