DMESG(8) GENIX Programmer's Manual DMESG(8)
NAME
dmesg - collect system diagnostic messages to form error log
SYNOPSIS
/etc/dmesg [ - ]
DESCRIPTION
Dmesg looks in a system buffer for recently printed diagnostic mes-
sages and prints them on the standard output. The messages are
those printed by the system when device (hardware) errors occur and
(occasionally) when system tables overflow non-fatally. If the -
flag is given, then dmesg computes (incrementally) the new messages
since the last time it was run and places these on the standard out-
put. This is typically used with cron(8) to produce the error log
/usr/adm/messages by running the command
/etc/dmesg - >> /usr/adm/messages
every 10 minutes.
FILES
/usr/adm/messages error log (conventional location)
/usr/adm/msgbuf scratch file for memory of - option
BUGS
The system error message buffer is of small finite size. As dmesg
is run only every few minutes, not all error messages are guaranteed
to be logged. This can be construed as a blessing rather than a
curse.
Error diagnostics generated immediately before a system crash will
never get logged.
Printed 11/16/83 1