Getting messages from services that don't exist

Question

For about 3 hours this afternoon, I got the following messages from services that I don't have (either uninstalled or never heard of):

[2020-01-27 14:02:57] dss-mint [daemon.info] [systemd] Started ntp-systemd-netif.path.
[2020-01-27 14:03:11] dss-mint [daemon.err] [ntpdate] the NTP socket is in use, exiting
[2020-01-27 14:06:44] dss-mint [daemon.info] [ntpd] Deleting interface #4 wlxbcec23100000, 192.168.0.11#123, interface stats: received=119, sent=128, dropped=0, active_time=416 secs

I use systemd-timesyncd, uninstalled ntpd and ntpdate soon after I installed my system. Other than today, these phantom services have never shown up in any logs (rsyslog or journal). The ntp-systemd-netif entry is particularly troubling; I can't find anything on the 'net on it and systemctl searches come up empty.

UPDATE: I added module(load="imjournal") to my /etc/rsyslog.conf file during this time (playing with syslog formatting). Is it possible that these messages came errantly from the journal? There are older entries of ntp there, but nothing newer than November 2019.

Answer 1

It turns out that whenever rsyslog is restarted on my PC, it sends old messages from certain facilities (mostly from kernel and the last boot). What's puzzling is why the messages have the wrong date (today instead of the actual message date), but the right time.

At least this explains why I was getting the bogus messages mentioned in the question.