# How to view the Boot Log?

## squareHat

How can I review the Boot log messages on bootup, they scroll so fast, and they do not appear to be stored anywhere obvious.

Can these logs be stored somewhere? are they already there?Last edited by squareHat on Thu Sep 25, 2008 11:36 am; edited 1 time in total

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## gentoo_ram

Messages from the kernel can be seen using the command 'dmesg'.  Messages from both the kernel and system processes can be seen if you are using some kind of syslog daemon.  I recommend syslog-ng.  Assuming you are using that, the default configuration puts the messages in /var/log/messages.

The /var/log directory contains the system log files.

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## squareHat

I am specifically interested in the messages sent to the console at boot time. I am aware of dmesg and i already have syslog, though its not running until  the machine is half up... Iideally it would be nice to have a copy of what went to the console at startup.

Can it be done?

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## ZeuZ_NG

emerge bootlog and add it to default at bootup, it will run in one of the first runlevels and produce a priceless log in /var/log/bootlog  :Wink: 

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## swimmer

Be aware that it does not work together with framebuffer decorations ...

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## squareHat

emerge -av bootlog

These are the packages that would be merged, in order:

Calculating dependencies |

emerge: there are no ebuilds to satisfy "bootlog".

has this been removed from the portage tree?

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## swimmer

You can find a bit more information in /etc/conf.d/rc:

```
# RC_BOOTLOG will generate a log of the boot messages shown on the console.  

# Useful for headless machines or debugging.  You need to emerge the 

# app-admin/showconsole package for this to work.  Note that this probably

# won't work correctly with boot splash.
```

HTH

swimmer

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## squareHat

Thats a big improvement! Thanks

It does not capture all the messages, the kernel messages are not captured which is fine, as I can get them from dmesg

but the last boot message I get is: 

* Device Initiiated services:net.eth0 udev-postmount

and then the rest of the message don't appear in the log.

Is there some further config? Or is that the best I can get?

It looks like the Scroll Lock does the best job so far... 

thanks

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