Hello everyone,
I'm positive this issue has been addressed earlier here or elsewhere, but I haven't found a conclusive explanation for why this happens or how to remedy it. I believe this is the right forum to discuss it.
Logwatch keeps issuing floods of failed bitwise lookup operations in /etc/log.d/scripts/services/kernel:
Use of uninitialized value in bitwise or (|) at /etc/log.d/scripts/services/kernel line 100, <STDIN> line 1516658.
Use of uninitialized value in left bitshift (<<) at /etc/log.d/scripts/services/kernel line 102, <STDIN> line 1516658.
Argument "" isn't numeric in left bitshift (<<) at /etc/log.d/scripts/services/kernel line 102, <STDIN> line 1516658.
These started happening after I tried to block break-in attempts from some IPs, using IPTables DROP rules (although I'm unclear as to whether there's a link between the two). The message appears to indicate that a malformed IP is being sent to the compIP subroutine:
sub compIP {
....my ($a1,$a2,$a3,$a4,$aval,$bval);
....
....# get numeric values for a and b
....($a1,$a2,$a3,$a4) = split /\./,$a;
....$aval = ($a1 << 24) | ($a2 << 16) | ($a3 << 8) | $a4; # line 100
....($a1,$a2,$a3,$a4) = split /\./,$b;
....$bval = ($a1 << 24) | ($a2 << 16) | ($a3 << 8) | $a4; # line 102
....
....return $aval <=> $bval;
}I've reset (flushed) the firewall rules (-F), but still the problem persists. Is this due to a versioning issue, a configuration issue, a bug, wrong settings? I'm a newbye who's been wrestling with this for a little while and would appreciate any help.
Thanks,
Eric Vautier
