Sun Microsystems Sun Workstation 100U System Manager's Manual page 179

DMESG(8)
MAINTENANCE COMMANDS DMESG(8)
NAME
dmesg - collect system diagnostic messages to form error log
SYNOPSIS
/uar/etc/dm ... [ -
J
DESCRIPTION
FILES
BUGS
24
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 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 output. 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.
/usr/adm/messages
/usr/adm/msgbuf
error log (conventional location)
scratch file for memory of - option
The system error message buffer is of small finite size.
As
dmesl 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.
Last change: 4 February 1983
Sun Release 1.1