Comment 14 for bug 115774

I just noticed that it is also the case with kern.log:

$ ls -lah kern.log*
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 178K 2008-11-25 10:49 kern.log
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 15G 2008-11-24 01:05 kern.log.0
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 118M 2008-11-18 09:40 kern.log.1.gz
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 69M 2008-11-17 11:13 kern.log.2.gz
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 15K 2008-11-10 22:44 kern.log.3.gz

I think the cause of these large files might also have been waking up with a thread scheduling problem:

Nov 20 19:46:08 tatooine kernel: [28959.216716] Call Trace:
Nov 20 19:46:08 tatooine kernel: [28959.216718] [<ffffffff8023e06d>] dequeue_task_idle+0x2d/0x40
Nov 20 19:46:08 tatooine kernel: [28959.216721] [<ffffffff8023c436>] dequeue_task+0x96/0xe0
Nov 20 19:46:08 tatooine kernel: [28959.216723] [<ffffffff8023c4d3>] deactivate_task+0x23/0x30
Nov 20 19:46:08 tatooine kernel: [28959.216726] [<ffffffff80500685>] thread_return+0x108/0x3c3
Nov 20 19:46:08 tatooine kernel: [28959.216728] [<ffffffff8026d12e>] ? sched_clock_idle_wakeup_event+0xe/0x10
Nov 20 19:46:08 tatooine kernel: [28959.216731] [<ffffffff80210ecd>] cpu_idle+0xad/0x110
Nov 20 19:46:08 tatooine kernel: [28959.216734] [<ffffffff804fd735>] start_secondary+0x97/0xc2
Nov 20 19:46:08 tatooine kernel: [28959.216735]
Nov 20 19:46:08 tatooine kernel: [28959.216823] bad: scheduling from the idle thread!
Nov 20 19:46:08 tatooine kernel: [28959.216826] Pid: 0, comm: swapper Tainted: P 2.6.27-7-generic #1
Nov 20 19:46:08 tatooine kernel: [28959.216827]
Nov 20 19:46:08 tatooine kernel: [28959.216828] Call Trace:
Nov 20 19:46:08 tatooine kernel: [28959.216830] [<ffffffff8023e06d>] dequeue_task_idle+0x2d/0x40
Nov 20 19:46:08 tatooine kernel: [28959.216832] [<ffffffff8023c436>] dequeue_task+0x96/0xe0
Nov 20 19:46:08 tatooine kernel: [28959.216835] [<ffffffff8023c4d3>] deactivate_task+0x23/0x30
Nov 20 19:46:08 tatooine kernel: [28959.216837] [<ffffffff80500685>] thread_return+0x108/0x3c3
Nov 20 19:46:08 tatooine kernel: [28959.216840] [<ffffffff8026d12e>] ? sched_clock_idle_wakeup_event+0xe/0x10
Nov 20 19:46:08 tatooine kernel: [28959.216843] [<ffffffff80210ecd>] cpu_idle+0xad/0x110
...etc