[SOLVED] View Boot Messages

silverhammermba · 2013-08-30 03:38:41

Recently I noticed something different being printed during boot. It comes before all of the [ OK ] messages but it goes by way too fast for me to see anything. I would like to see it.

I've read https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Di … t_Messages. I've checked dmesg. I've checked journalctl -b. Neither of them contain those boot messages. I've tried disabling TTYVTDisallocate but that only shows me the last few [ OK ] messages and it won't let me scroll up to see what comes before. I've tried using Ctrl-S and Ctrl-Q but that seems to only be able to pause before anything is printed or after it's already flown past. My /etc/issue has no screen clearing escape characters in it.

Surely there must be a way to read these messages. I've searched for this a lot and just keep finding people saying "read dmesg!".

Last edited by silverhammermba (2013-09-03 04:02:55)

WonderWoofy · 2013-08-30 03:50:06

If there is something goidn wrong, you will see it in the journal. So if you don't see error messages, there is probably nothing to worry about. There is a way to enable scrollback with TTYVTDisallocate=no, but I can't remember what it was. I remember seeing karol and cfr discussing it in one of these threads.

If you want you initramfs logged, see the mkinitpcio man page, specifically rd.log part. You can have it saved to /run/initramfs if you want. Maybe it is being printed there.

silverhammermba · 2013-08-30 04:23:35

I resorted to filming it with my phone and pausing at the right moment. The message was appearing before the "Welcome to Arch Linux!" message. It was the warning about my root partition being mounted ro instead of rw. I went back and checked journalctl for anything related to this but still came up empty.

So I've resolved the issue that was causing the message, but academically I'm still interested in how these messages can be viewed (without a video recorder).

WonderWoofy · 2013-08-30 04:44:59

Did you try the method I mentioned above by setting rd.log on the kernel command line? I have been using systemd in my initramfs for quite some time, so I've never really used that kernel command line arg besides seeing if it worked (systemd in the initramfs logs aboslutely everything anyway).

That warning though might just be configured to print to the console because it is really just a warning. I'm not entierly sure. You can look in the mkinitpcio scripts, as it is part of the fsck hook specifically (which I also don't use because I use btrfs, which has no fsck tool).

karol · 2013-08-30 10:41:18

See https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=168036

MariusMatutiae · 2013-08-31 10:04:51

Boot messages can be seen in two ways:

1) by moving to TTY1 (Ctrl+Alt+F1, all three at the same time); you may return to your X-session, when you are done, hit Ctrl+Alt+F7.

2) by patiently sifting thru the output of dmesg, which carries more info:

dmesg | more

Cheers

karol · 2013-08-31 10:31:18

With systemd X starts on tty1 by default. If you run 'startx' by hand on tty2, the second X will start on tty2.

silverhammermba · 2013-09-03 04:02:43

Enabling early KMS and setting TTYVTDisallocate=no worked for me! Thanks. I've updated the wiki page about viewing boot messages with this info.

Last edited by silverhammermba (2013-09-03 04:13:58)

MariusMatutiae · 2013-09-03 14:25:37

karol wrote:

With systemd X starts on tty1 by default.

Not necessarily. I have both systemd and KDE, and I start my session on F7 automatically. To see boot messages, I then switch to F1.

Arch Linux

#1 2013-08-30 03:38:41

[SOLVED] View Boot Messages

#2 2013-08-30 03:50:06

Re: [SOLVED] View Boot Messages

#3 2013-08-30 04:23:35

Re: [SOLVED] View Boot Messages

#4 2013-08-30 04:44:59

Re: [SOLVED] View Boot Messages

#5 2013-08-30 10:41:18

Re: [SOLVED] View Boot Messages

#6 2013-08-31 10:04:51

Re: [SOLVED] View Boot Messages

#7 2013-08-31 10:31:18

Re: [SOLVED] View Boot Messages

#8 2013-09-03 04:02:43

Re: [SOLVED] View Boot Messages

#9 2013-09-03 14:25:37

Re: [SOLVED] View Boot Messages

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