I have been getting the following diagnostic message frequently —
kernel [0]: IOSurface: buffer allocation size is zero.

Any idea what's happening?
Is this something that I should be worrying about?
And if so, what can I do about it?

OS X 10.7.5 Lion

A Google search for this message turns up many pages of hits all relating to Adobe Flash Player and going back 5 or more years. Some users even report it locking up their computer. I obviously did not read all the hits but the commonly suggested fix is to be sure Flash Player and any other installed Adobe products are up to date or to remove Flash Player.

Merci. Interesting. However ...

I updated my Shockwave Flash plugin to 17.0.0.134 3 days ago.

Even though I rarely allow activation of Flash Player, I did the other day for a specific website and only for that occasion. There may in fact have been some residue left behind.

Since I cleared my browser cache and restarted my iMac, I've had no further problem with browser allocation (as far as I can tell after searching my diagnostic logs).

But back to the original concern: Would zero size buffer allocation be something to be concerned about?

As far as I could tell from what I read it is only of consequence when using Flash Player and the biggest problem caused is generating a LOT of error messages. It may even be a spurious error message generated by coding errors in Flash Player.

I am not seeing the message in any of my console logs, but all my systems are running Yosemite. It may be the case that whatever conflict was causing the error has been eliminated in more recent versions of OS X so no one is working on it any more.

Okey-dokey. We'll run with that until something truly wonky ± nefarious pops up.