I've a debian system that acts as a gateway for our flat.

The syslog configuration there has these strings:

*.*       -/dev/tty12
*.err     /dev/tty11
*.warn    /dev/tty10
*.info    /dev/tty9

Occasionally I found, that if a scroll lock is pressed on a console
above, the system, after a relatively long time, becomes unusable:

I can't login via console, I can't get an ip from dhcp server from the
gate on my laptop.

root@gw:~# cat /etc/debian_version
6.0.8
root@gw:~# dpkg -l |grep syslog
ii  inetutils-syslogd                    2:1.6-3.1+squeeze2
    system logging daemon
rc  rsyslog                              4.6.4-2
    enhanced multi-threaded syslogd
root@gw:~#


Using rsyslog is not an option for me due to its regular but rare bug
- one/two/../N times a year it stops logging and I loose (possibly
critical) logging information needed to find a reason of the system
crash (and I can't report it due to no information available). For me
it's easier to switch back to old stable syslog.