I've been using Leopard fine since Friday night, and just this afternoon, it's randomly starting to hog my CPU (1 core).

Every few minutes, it will max out, for about 5 minutes, then stop. It does this over and over.

I've rebooted and its happened still.

I've looked at which files syslogd is currently using, and it's not writing anything to the logs. I've also looked in the system.log file and seen nothing written when syslogd starts to use 100% CPU.

Has anyone come across this issue?

Yasu has just been updated for Leopard.
Try running it and see if it fixes things.
http://jimmitchell.org/projects/yasu/

I gave it a run, no go

However, I have been able to replicate this somewhat.

Logging in from a fresh reboot, and launching activity monitor & console, I am able to observe that anything writing to the system.log file, will cause syslogd to use 100% CPU. As soon as there's no more messages in system.log, CPU use returns to normal. If I do something to write something to log (like connecting to a wireless network, or updating my time server), will cause syslogd to go to 100%

Does anyone know how I can contain this?

See:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread....readID=1203511
You will find your answers there.

EDIT: Ah, I see you've posted there. But above your post a few guys reckon they've fixed it.

Go back to Tiger?
Sorry, cheap laugh!

Maybe this thread will help?

http://discussions.apple.com/thread....sageID=5693737

edit: oh you posted in that thread to... I'm trying to help a friend with this issue, will let you know if we find an answer, about to reinstall OS.

yeah I had a similar issue this morning beofre going to work. I shut down almost all the running apps, but the syslogd was still taking up all my resources, and when I checked the logs in console I couldn't pin it to anything definitive. I thought it may have been Quicksilver or Transmission, but even with those off, it was still 'writing'.

had to reboot it - logging off the user didn't do anything!

will update to the newest QS when I get home tonight.

This is on a G4 PowerBook (last revision) with an archive & install, TM off.

Hmmmm - I did a clean install. I don't have Quicksilver or Transmission install on the MBP either.

It hasn't happened on my iMac at work yet, we shall see.

hasn't happened since...!

odd!!