My Arch install throws up a red error when booting but I can't see what it says because it flies by so quickly during loading. Where is the boot log? Would it be somewhere in /var/log? or maybe in /boot?
Would much rather see the log text file than the scroll lock trick.
Best Answer
The kernel does not have a filesystem to write to during most of boot, so if the boot failed, you may be out of luck. However, it does keep a log in memory (including what you see on the console) and once it does have a rw fs, that stuff is dumped into
/var/log/syslog
.You can also view the kernel log starting from the beginning with
dmesg
(probably you want to usedmesg | less
).However, I don't think the kernel uses colored emphasis (in any case, the color itself won't be in a log), implying this is a system service. Some of those also start before a rw filesystem is available, and if that's the case, there may be no record of the message at all. Otherwise their stuff should also be in
/var/log/syslog
.You can also try SCROLL LOCK, or ctrl-S (pause) ctrl-Q (continue) during boot. There's also a "boot_delay" parameter that can be put on the kernel command-line (e.g. in grub.conf).
From src/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt:
Hopefully at least one of these works for you.