Once the userspace boot messages are gone from the console in Debian, they’re gone forever. How do I log all messages sent to the /dev/console device to a logfile under Debian Linux sever?
You need to use the bootlogd to record boot messages to a file called /var/log/boot. However, this is turned off by default. Edit /etc/default/bootlogd, enter:
# vi /etc/default/bootlogd
To run bootlogd at startup set it as follows:
Adblock detected 😱
My website is made possible by displaying online advertisements to my visitors. I get it! Ads are annoying but they help keep this website running. It is hard to keep the site running and producing new content when so many people block ads. Please consider donating money to the nixCraft via
PayPal/
Bitcoin, or become a
supporter using Patreon.
After reboot you can see message in /var/log/boot:
# tail -f /var/log/boot
OR
# egrep -iw 'word1|err|warn' /var/log/boot
Posted by: Vivek Gite
The author is the creator of nixCraft and a seasoned sysadmin, DevOps engineer, and a trainer for the Linux operating system/Unix shell scripting. Get the latest tutorials on SysAdmin, Linux/Unix and open source topics via RSS/XML feed or weekly email newsletter.
5 comment
Interesting…But I thought usually whatever is in console is usually piped to messages anyway
Setting BOOTLOGD_ENABLE=yes does not work in the current version of Ubuntu. This is a popular recommendation, but it ain’t gonna help :-(
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/boot/+bug/34165
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/sysvinit/+bug/306998
https://bugs.launchpad.net/upstart/+bug/328881
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/2933
Thanks for the nice post ,
dj you are right regarding Ubuntu , i have tried the above method but it did not work for me (I am using ubuntu 9.10) but unfortunately i have just noticed your comment after applying the above method ……………………..
How do I do same with CentOS/RHEL?
Plz help Vivek!
Thanks for this post. Unfortunately I’m getting what seems to be some strange character muddling in the log, always at the end of each line, about the last one third. Is there any way to specify a charset for the log or some other solution?