Ok, I did as you instructed using emacs, but the log messages near the shutdown messages still seem totally unrelated, as far as I can tell. There are a few that are preceded by gconf thingies, which I gather are from times when I've shutdown from inside GNOME, and one or two that have no comments near (timewise) the shutdown. The comments about gconf are in swedish, so I'm not listing them -- the same problem occurs in shutdowns where the gconf comments are not present anyway.
/var/log/messages seems to be a dead end unless I can somehow crank up the detailness (?) so that more messages are logged.
----- Original
Message ----
From: Bob McGowan <bob_mcgowan@symantec.com>
To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
Sent: Tuesday, March 6, 2007 9:52:17 PM
Subject: Re: Raid shuts down uncleanly?
Land Haj wrote:
> I did this:
>
> cat messages | grep shutdown
>
> but it reveals nothing useful in regards to the problem, nor does the
> rest of the file. The only messages listed at shutdown time are:
>
> Mar 6 20:15:13 greengoblin shutdown[3244]: shutting down for system reboot
> Mar 6 20:15:21 greengoblin kernel: Kernel logging (proc) stopped.
> Mar 6 20:15:21 greengoblin kernel: Kernel log daemon terminating.
> Mar 6 20:15:22 greengoblin exiting on signal 15
>
> Can the shutdown not be logged in some other, more detailed way?
>
> Gratefully,
>
> landhaj
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From:
Bob McGowan <bob_mcgowan@symantec.com>
> To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
> Sent: Tuesday, March 6, 2007 9:26:33 PM
> Subject: Re: Raid shuts down uncleanly?
>
> Land Haj wrote:
> > Thank you for your reply!
> >
> > Today, I've dpkg-reconfigured mdadm. It had all md-devices listed as
> > necessary for root, and so I changed it so that only md0 (where root is)
> > is listed as necessary. This for some reason got rid of the message
> > saying that swap (md1) was busy. But md0 and md2 are still not unmounted.
> >
> > I've been trying to find the shutdown log, but I've failed. Is it
> > supposed to be in wtmp? If so, how do I read it -- it's binary.
> >
> > The end of the shutdown messages are displayed so fast and then
blanked
> > out so that I have no time to see them all. I finally managed to catch a
> > few of them with my camera (!), and this is what is said, among other
> > things:
> >
> > * It can't create the /etc/mtab log file
> > * It can't create the /lib/init/rw/.mdadm directory
> >
> > Both are because the file system is read-only, but I do not know if they
> > are normal messages or related to my issue somehow.
> >
> > The rest is only a repetition of "md0 still in use", etc.
> >
> > If someone can instruct me in how to log the shutdown properly I'll post
> > the log here to see if anyone can help.
> >
> > Thanks for
helping!
> >
> > /landhaj
> >
> > ----- Original Message ----
> <--snipped-->
>
> Check the file /var/log/messages, searching for the word 'shutdown' and
> see if there's anything there that's helpful.
>
> Otherwise, I have no other suggestions for you.
>
> Bob
>
That's because the file has multiple lines, not all of which have the
word shutdown in them, but which may be related. So, you need to use an
editor or pager (vi, gedit, less, more, ...), search for 'shutdown' and
then look at the lines following and/or just before it, for possible clues.
Bob