Re: Tracking boot messages
On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 11:43 AM, Stephen Powell <zlinuxman@wowway.com> wrote:
> 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?
The closest to what you're looking for is to add "debug" to the boot
command line to have your initrd's "/init" run with "set -x" and have
its output saved to "/dev/.initramfs/initramfs.debug".
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