I'll assume that "mod" is wrong and that you're not
complaining about too small a kernel buffer. You want to
capture not only the kernel messages written to dmesg but
also the output of all the rc scripts.
I agree with this goal. I always wanted to capture the
boot-time messages and all of the extra console output
during the boot when I was working with Digital UNIX. In
the end, the only complete solution I found was indeed
the one Bill Freeman mentioned: a serial console and, in
my case, an expect script recording the output and the
timing on another machine (I was investigating the time
it took to boot, so I even wanted the console firmware
output).
Recently I set up a Digital UNIX system again (I'm
working on contract to Compaq) and developed a partial
solution. Perhaps you can adapt it to your Linux
distribution if it's using the SysV-like inittab + rcN
directories.
I modified the rc2 and rc3 scripts to check for both a
config file flag LOG_INITSCRIPTS and a command-line
argument. The addition went in near the top of the file
and looked like this:
LOG_INITSCRIPTS=`/usr/sbin/rcmgr get LOG_INITSCRIPTS`
[ "LOG_INITSCRIPTS" = "TRUE" ] && \
[ $# = 0 ] && \
exec /bin/sh -xv $0 LOGGING 2>&1 | tee /var/adm/rc2.log
The rcmgr line will have to be replaced by something else
on Linux...maybe just a test for the existence of a file
in /etc. The re-exec of the script with a shell having
the -xv flags set is only executed if you pass the first
gate (which says you want to log the scripts' output) and
the second gate (which says there are no command line
options, like the "LOGGING" option). I didn't go so far
as to try to get the -xv flags propagated into each of
the startup scripts.
You can still get your kernel console messages with
dmesg. (I copied /var/adm/syslog.dated/current/kern.log
to a place where it would not be rotated out by log
rotation). The way I have it set up, these boot logs are
overwritten at each boot.
What's missing are the messages, if any, from bcheckrc,
fsck, etc -- since there's no writable file system space
available before they've run -- and any other scripts or
commands started directly from /etc/inittab.
Jim McGinness
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