NAME

dmesg − collect system diagnostic messages to form error log

SYNOPSIS

/etc/dmesg [−]

DESCRIPTION

dmesg looks in a system buffer for recently printed diagnostic messages and prints them on the standard output.  The messages are those printed by the system when unusual events occur (such as when system tables overflow or the system crashes).  If the − flag is given, dmesg computes (incrementally) the new messages since the last time it was run and places these on the standard output.  This is typically used with cron(1) to produce the error log /usr/adm/messages by running the command:

/etc/dmesg − >> /usr/adm/messages

every 10 minutes. 

WARNINGS

The system error message buffer is of small, finite size.  Because dmesg is run only every few minutes, not all error messages are guaranteed to be logged. 

AUTHOR

dmesg was developed by the University of California, Berkeley. 

FILES

/usr/adm/messages error log (conventional location)

/usr/adm/msgbuf memory scratch file for − option

Hewlett-Packard Company  —  HP-UX Release 8.05: June 1991