Home / server / Questions / 629372
Accepted
hamstar
Asked: 2014-09-18 17:37:18 +0800 CST

What do repeating '^@' symbols in a logfile mean?

  • 772

A few times I have come across this in a log file:

Sep 17 09:35:57 00187d378926 ovpn-00187d378926[1701]: /sbin/ifconfig tun0 0.0.0.0
Sep 17 09:35:57 00187d378926 kernel: Kernel logging (proc) stopped.
Sep 17 09:35:57 00187d378926 rsyslogd: [origin software="rsyslogd" swVersion="4.6.4" x-pid="1707" x-info="http://www.rsyslog.com"] exiting on signal 15.
^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@
^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@
^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@

What does it mean? Sometimes it is a single line, other times it is lots of lines. I usually see it happen on Debian 6 machines.

linux

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    I believe that these are NULL (0x00) characters. Just from the segment of the log file that you have presented, looks like a reboot. It is possible that the buffer to be written out to the logfile was a little corrupt due to the stopping of the kernel logging daemon while attempting to write out something. This is only an educated guess however.

    Summary: I'd not be overly converned from what I see here.

    • 4