Help decoding System.log entry

Question

Hello,
Does anyone know what this entry in the System log means?
Jul 23 14:40:19 www fseventsd[43]: failed to make the directory /private/tmp/278/E/.fseventsd (1/Operation not permitted)
Jul 23 14:40:59 www fseventsd[43]: scan_old: bailing out because device mounted @ /private/tmp/278/E has dls 0x0 and dls->fci 0x0
Does it mean I should do anything ... ?
Thanks in advance for the help.

Answer 1

Probably not. fseventsd is the daemon responsible for reading filesystem events from a special device file in /dev/ (basically, from the kernel), and writing those events to log files stored in directories named .fseventsd.
Each filesystem volume that exists and has events associated with it will have a .fseventd directory at its root. For example, take a look in your / directory and you'll see one (to look inside, you'll need to be root or use sudo).
The whole reason for the daemon's existence is so that any other application on the Mac can take advantage of filesystem events without having to read directly from the kernel. Instead, they read from ordinary log files.
What that error is saying is that you have some external disk or disk image (i.e. volume) attaching itself to a directory in /private/tmp, and fseventsd is having problems setting up the proper log file directory in order to make filesystem events work for that volume. The "1/Operation not permitted" message is a standard error code, "1" being the numeric code and "operation not permitted" being the corresponding string code. This error typically means that the underlying filesystem (in this case, your mystery volume) is purposefully denying the creation of the object in a way _other than_ by permissions. For example, there could be a file flag set making the root of the filesystem immutable.
To understand more, it would be helpful to know what is attaching itself to that area in your tmp directory. Regardless, I don't think the errors are much to worry about...