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Syslogd Overwhelming Your Computer?

If your Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) system is unexpectedly sluggish, logging might be the culprit. Run Activity Monitor (Applications/Utilities/ folder), and click the CPU column twice to get it to show most to least activity. If syslogd is at the top of the list, there's a fix. Syslogd tracks informational messages produced by software and writes them to the asl.db, a file in your Unix /var/log/ directory. It's a known problem that syslogd can run amok. There's a fix: deleting the asl.db file.

Launch Terminal (from the same Utilities folder), and enter these commands exactly as written, entering your administrative password when prompted:

sudo launchctl stop com.apple.syslogd

sudo rm /var/log/asl.db

sudo launchctl start com.apple.syslogd

Your system should settle down to normal. For more information, follow the link.

Visit Discussion of syslogd problem at Smarticus

Written by Glenn Fleishman

 

 

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QuickTime 7.5 Addresses Security Concerns, iMovie and iDVD Updated

While the iPhone 3G and Snow Leopard grabbed everyone's attention at the Worldwide Developers Conference last week, Apple also released security and bug-fix updates to QuickTime, iMovie '08, and iDVD '08.

QuickTime 7.5 tackles several security issues dealing with maliciously crafted media: PICT images, AAC-encoded media, and Indeo video. It also changes the behavior of handling URLs by revealing files in the Finder or Windows Explorer instead of launching them. (For more information on recent QuickTime security issues and how Apple is addressing them, see "QuickTime Security Enhanced with Anti-Exploitation Technologies," 2008-04-23.)

QuickTime 7.5 is available via Software Update or as stand-alone downloads for the following operating systems: Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard (56 MB), Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger (52.8 MB), Mac OS X 10.3 Panther (51.39 MB), and Windows XP and Vista (22.67 MB).

Apple's updates for iMovie and iDVD only state that each addresses "general compatibility issues, improves overall stability, and addresses a number of other minor issues." They're also available via Software Update (once QuickTime 7.5, which is required, is installed), or as stand-alone downloads: iMovie 7.1.2 (17.9 MB) and iDVD 7.0.2 (20.27 MB). They also require Mac OS X 10.4.11 or later.

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