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 - argument is specified, 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 (see 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.  dmesg is run only every few minutes, so there is no guarantee that all error messages will 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 9.0: August 1992