no more syslog messages!? (and other problems)

[Ernie Buford]

Hi,

I'm new on this list (and new to RHEL4 on Dell Precision) and hope there's
someone on this low-traffic list that can help....

Sometime in the last several days I lost my syslog messages.  The file
/var/log/messages is empty despite syslog/klogd running.  This system
also failed to do the time change over the weekend (and I've got a laundry
list of other minor problems/annoyances that I'll save for later).

This is a 64-bit Precision 490 with RHEL4 WS as shipped from Dell.
I've updated the kernel recently (around the time this latest problem
cropped up?) and did so again today.  Here's the only suspicious-
looking dmesg excerpt I see:

ACPI: HPET (v001 DELL    B8K     0x0000000d ASL  0x00000061) @ 
0x00000000000fd1e1
ACPI: TCPA (v001 DELL    B8K     0x0000000d ASL  0x00000061) @ 
0x00000000000fd43d
 >>> ERROR: Invalid checksum
ACPI: SLIC (v001 DELL    B8K     0x0000000d ASL  0x00000061) @ 
0x00000000000fd219
ACPI: DSDT (v001   DELL    dt_ex 0x00001000 INTL 0x20050624) @ 
0x0000000000000000
No NUMA configuration found
Faking a node at 0000000000000000-0000000140000000
Bootmem setup node 0 0000000000000000-0000000140000000

.... but I believe this message might predate the syslog problem? ....
here's one other excerpt where I decline to do anything in kudzu (why does
kudzu always try to config new hardware when I don't have any new 
hardware!?)....

ACPI: PCI Root Bridge [PCI0] (00:00)
PCI: Probing PCI hardware (bus 00)
PCI: Ignoring BAR0-3 of IDE controller 0000:00:1f.1

Does anyone have insights into this problem.... if I have any luck here 
maybe I'll
post more about other issues I'm experiencing.  Feel free to tell me I'm 
whacked
to be trying to run RHEL4 on a workstation to begin with (I just thought 
it would
be a better experience than it has been so far).  I'm getting closer to 
falling back
on Windows anyway (sigh), which I'm used to, and sticking with Linux on my
servers only.

Best,
Ernie