where is the boot-message logfile?

minike · 05-22-2005, 09:11 PM

hi, friends... somewhere I read the boot messages (that's 'autoprobe'?) are saved in a a sort of logfile, but I don't know it name nor it location in the slack filesystem .. I was looking around here and there, but didn't found it.
the reason I want to read that file is to know what's / what's not working in my system.
thanks in advance

MS3FGX · 05-22-2005, 09:18 PM

Generic system logs (including kernel output) are stored in /var/log/syslog and /var/log/messages.

If you just want to see the kernel boot messages as you saw them when the machine started up, run the command "dmesg" as soon as the machine starts up. That will show you all of the kernel's output.

If you want to save that to a file, just do:

dmesg > log.txt

Which will save the kernel boot messages to a text file you can open up later in an editor, or grep through to find a particular line.

minike · 05-22-2005, 11:18 PM

thanks 4 answer..
I've followed your recipe, and it works just fine: now I have my bootmsg.txt..
but I notice it's not 'exactly' like the one showed during the system-loading process.. why I know that? 'coz I remember in that prosess the line: "...going multiuser..." and another like "....who needs to ismode?..." -or something like that.
do you know if exist anyhow to get an exact-copy of the message we're talking about?
thanks again!

MS3FGX · 05-22-2005, 11:39 PM

As far as I know, anything before the "INIT:" line, is actually a message that the kernel itself is displaying before the rest of the system starts up.

At that point, the log programs have not started, and the only thing running on the machine is just the bare kernel.

So as far as I know, nothing logs what is shown at that point. But I could be wrong about that.

Maybe somebody else knows of a way to see the messages shown before INIT?

gbonvehi · 05-23-2005, 12:00 AM

This is the message you're seeing from /etc/rc.d/rc.M:

Quote:

# Tell the viewers what's going to happen.
echo "Going multiuser..."

And if i'm not wrong, this clean up the dmesg buffer so previous stuff won't be displayed:

Quote:

# Save the contents of 'dmesg':
/bin/dmesg -s 65536 > /var/log/dmesg

That's also from rc.M, so basically things in rc.S won't be shown with a dmesg command but can be seen on /var/log/dmesg

Also if i'm not wrong, dmesg won't capture messages that are simply echoed to console like that "Going multiuser..."

minike · 05-23-2005, 04:47 PM

ok, pals! gonna check all this stuff out.. -but first I'm going to bed: I'ts been a looooong day.....