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As the only computer programmer in his family, Kim Johnsson is uniquely qualified to solve any technical problem that might come up, ranging from installing a digital camera to fixing the "blinking 12:00" on a microwave. A recent support call had him diagnosing the all-too-common "it keeps crashing with all these messages" problem on a cousin's computer. After a lot of back-and-forth, Kim was finally able to determine what one of the messages was like:
Kim gave his standard "out of disk space" speech - too many games, too much downloaded music, etc - but his cousin assured him that he only used the computer for email, documents, and photographs, and that he had already deleted whatever games were installed. Kim figured it’d have to be something else, and stopped by for some on-site support.
When he sat in front of his cousin's computer, the C-drive seemed fine. 40 out of 120 gigabytes free. But eighty gigabytes did seem like an awful lot for a casual user, so Kim started digging around.
After looking through various folders, Kim eventually ended up in C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local settings\temp\. Apparently, some temporary directory. He immediately identified a single, 75GB file named LSBurnWatcher.log. Since Notepad - or really, any other text editor - couldn't open such a file, Kim deleted it.
Simple enough, problem solved! But just to be sure, Kim restarted the computer and peeked in the temp folder again. LSBurnWatcher.log returned and weighed in at a kilobyte. He loaded it up in Notepad.
2007-08-25 10:43:43.078: --> Starting... 2007-08-25 10:43:43.265: Found 1 printer. 2007-08-25 10:43:43.265: IsLightScribePresent(): LightScribe is present! 2007-08-25 10:43:43.265: Starting WaitForDirChange() ...
Figuring it was some sort of startup log, Kim restarted the computer again. The file's size doubled.
2007-08-25 10:43:43.078: --> Starting... 2007-08-25 10:43:43.265: Found 1 printer. 2007-08-25 10:43:43.265: IsLightScribePresent(): LightScribe is present! 2007-08-25 10:43:43.265: Starting WaitForDirChange() ... 2007-08-25 10:43:43.078: --> Starting... 2007-08-25 10:43:43.265: Found 1 printer. 2007-08-25 10:43:43.265: IsLightScribePresent(): LightScribe is present! 2007-08-25 10:43:43.265: Starting WaitForDirChange() ...
And just like he figured before, problem solved! Obviously, some programmer decided to log every startup, and neglected to delete the log file. Add that to a year or two of rebooting, and one gets a crippilingly-gigantic log file.
But just as Kim was about to leave, he realized something. It would take nearly three hundred and fifty nine million reboots for the file to grow so large. For those keeping score, that's one reboot a minute for nearly seven centuries.
Kim logged back on to the computer and waited. Sure enough, five minutes after starting up, the log file started ballooning at a rate of a few hundred kilobytes per second. By the time Kim loaded it up in notepad, it was 24MB, and looked like this:
2007-08-25 10:43:43.078: --> Starting... 2007-08-25 10:43:43.265: Found 1 printer. 2007-08-25 10:43:43.265: IsLightScribePresent(): LightScribe is present! 2007-08-25 10:43:43.265: Starting WaitForDirChange() ... 2007-08-25 10:45:31.343: --> Starting... 2007-08-25 10:45:35.171: Found 1 printer. 2007-08-25 10:45:35.187: IsLightScribePresent(): LightScribe is present! 2007-08-25 10:45:35.203: Starting WaitForDirChange() ... 2007-08-25 10:49:42.796: Finished waiting after 247 seconds. 2007-08-25 10:49:42.796: Didn't find iTunes dir. 2007-08-25 10:49:42.796: Starting WaitForDirChange() ... 2007-08-25 10:49:42.796: Finished waiting after 0 seconds. 2007-08-25 10:49:42.796: Didn't find iTunes dir. 2007-08-25 10:49:42.796: Starting WaitForDirChange() ... 2007-08-25 10:49:42.796: Finished waiting after 0 seconds. 2007-08-25 10:49:42.796: Didn't find iTunes dir. 2007-08-25 10:49:42.796: Starting WaitForDirChange() ... 2007-08-25 10:49:42.796: Finished waiting after 0 seconds. 2007-08-25 10:49:42.796: Didn't find iTunes dir. 2007-08-25 10:49:42.796: Starting WaitForDirChange() ... 2007-08-25 10:49:42.796: Finished waiting after 0 seconds. 2007-08-25 10:49:42.796: Didn't find iTunes dir. 2007-08-25 10:49:42.796: Starting WaitForDirChange() ...
Those last three lines were repeated a good 10,000 times or so. Not sure what else to do, Kim threw together a simple batch file that deleted the log file on start up. Finally, problem solved!
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google "LSBurnWatcher.log" looks like a troyan or virus ,well badly coded yes, but some annoying junk.
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I always answer "Yes, go ahead and get out." by the third time my 6 year old asks that question. Even when we're driving 70 mph on the expressway. (The child safety locks are always engaged just in case.) |
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Those people who complain that the solution used was "the real WTF" seem to never have been in such a situation. When you're asked to help with your brother's (or father's or friend's) problematic computer, you're usually in a very fragile situation.
The first thing Kim could expect had he uninstalled that crappy software would be a hot-line like call two days later, politely (or may be not so politely) complaining that the Lightscribe drive is not Lightscribing anymore. Try to replace the software with a new version, and the younger brother's favorite game might stop working at all. Yes, fifteen years ago I was quite confident to reconfigure any computer that crossed my path (they were all DOSes). Today - no, thanks. Simple batch file can't broke anything - er, I mean, anything that wouldn't broke all by itself the next time somebody coughes at the other end of the street. |
Re: The Really Big Log File
2008-01-14 11:56
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by
Anonymous, please:
(unregistered)
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The ultimate lesson in humility: finding your software on the http://thedailywtf.com.
(Though I honestly don't remember writing any logging code for this one, that could have been someone else...) |
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Hi,
I submitted the story, and I'd like to sort a few things out. First of all, something that didn't make it to the article was that the disk was actually full when I got there. His version of "deleting the games" was to delete the shortcuts. When I had actually removed the games, the disk was down to 40GB of free space. My immediate thought was of course to simply uninstall the lightscribe software, but I wasn't sure how that would affect the computer. After all this was a HP laptop with a lightscribe drive, and I didn't want to receive a call a few days later with him saying I crippled it. And yes, iTunes was installed on the computer. Not sure why the program failed to find it.
There's one important line in that answer: "Date logged: August, 2007". This "incident" occurred this summer, and of course I googled it (I'm not an idiot). However, at the time the first 5-10 result pages mostly included Russian or Italian, or otherwise irrelevant sites, and after that I kinda stopped looking. This is also why I didn't find an update for the program. Oh, and about CCleaner; I didn't want to add another program to the mess. A batch file could do the job just fine. And Scanner, didn't know about that. I'll look into that, thanks. Any more questions/comments/you're-the-wtf, feel free to ask :) *edit* And no, that wasn't the actual error message. |
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The real WTF is that Kim isn't screening phone calls from her relatives.
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A Nonny Mouse:
