Re: Tracking boot messages

[Stephen Powell <zlinuxman@wowway.com>]

On Mon, 17 Jan 2011 11:02:15 -0500 (EST), frank thyes wrote:
> On Mon, 2011-01-17 at 10:53 -0500, Stephen Powell wrote:
>> Hello, list.  I am trying to find a way to track boot messages.  I know about
>> things like
>> 
>>    dmesg|less
>> 
>> and
>> 
>>    less /var/log/syslog
>> 
>> but they don't cover everything.  For example, /etc/init.d/console-setup
>> issues a message during boot that goes something like this:
>> 
>>    Setting up console font and keymap
>> 
>> and this does not appear in either dmesg output or in /var/log/syslog.
>> Furthermore, it appears that the font change done by console-setup
>> kills my scrollback; so that Shift+PageUp and Shift+PageDown don't
>> work.  That is, I can't scroll back prior to the font change.
>> 
>> On some hardware platforms, such as s390, when running in a
>> virtual machine under z/VM, I can capture the console boot messages by
>> "spooling the virtual console".  But on other platforms, such as
>> i386, I do not know of a way to capture all the boot messages.  Does
>> anybody know of a way?  (I am running Debian Squeeze.)
> 
> /etc/default/bootlogd
> 
> Set BOOTLOGD_ENABLE=YES and examine /var/log/boot or dmesg after
> rebooting.

Hmm.  Well, that helps.  dmesg still does not contain the message from
console-setup, but /var/log/boot now does.  I'm not sure if I needed
to rebuild my initial RAM file system image after making the above
change, but I did anyway for good measure.  

Still, I was hoping for all boot messages in a single file somewhere.
/var/log/boot starts with 

   Setting parameters of disc: (none).

This is about three lines prior to

   Checking root file system...fsck from util-linux-ng 2.17.2

All boot messages prior to this point are not included in /var/log/boot.
Is there any way to get *all* messages actually written to the console
during boot in a single file somewhere?

-- 
  .''`.     Stephen Powell    
 : :'  :
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   `-