On Wed, May 23, 2007 8:59 am, Christoph Maier wrote:
> On Wed, 2007-05-23 at 08:39 -0700, Lan Barnes wrote:
>
>> Usually /var/log/messages. I often zero it with:
>>
>>   cat /dev/null>/var/log/messages
>>
>> Have to be root to do that.
>
> If I understand correctly what this command is doing
> (empty the /var/log/messages file?),
> it is the last thing Bill wants to do,
> because it would get rid of the error messages that he saw during
> installation, which probably still exist in some log file,
> maybe /var/log/messages
> (well, it's somewhat hard to be root in ubuntu, anyway).
>

No, you're right, it obliterates the message log. However, being lazy, I
often do this just before purposely percipitating the error again. It
simplifies looking for the error.

Bill, pay no attention to me. Listen to Christoph.

> Then again, I may misunderstand the cat command, and you may redirect
> everything that usually goes to /dev/null (i.e. the official Unix
> write-only memory) to /var/log/messages instead.
>
> I tried (unsuccessfully) to identify the messages related to my sound
> card in the log files, and noticed that ubuntu keeps a lot of messages.
>>From time to time, it seems to gzip (for newbies: compress a file using
> the gzip tool; type
> man gzip
> in a terminal to see details) the existing messages and start a new log
> file. Rather nice if something goes wrong and you want to be able to
> trace back how things _started_ to go wrong quite a while before you
> noticed.
>
> lspci | grep udio
> gets me the line that refers to my audio controller (it says "Audio",
> not "audio", so I need to omit the first letter when searching).
>
>> Also you can use tail on the file to see the
>> latest stuff. tail -f will do a live tail so you can do stuff and see
>> the
>> log messages pop up.
>>
>> A wonderful source of info is dmesg.
>>
>>   dmesg | less
>>
>> This gives the latest poop on what the kernel is seeing, similar to the
>> boot up messages.
>>
>> HTH,
>>
>> --
>> Lan Barnes
>>
>> SCM Analyst              Linux Guy
>> Tcl/Tk Enthusiast        Biodiesel Brewer
>>
>
> Christoph
>
> --
> [email protected]
> http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-newbie
>


-- 
Lan Barnes

SCM Analyst              Linux Guy
Tcl/Tk Enthusiast        Biodiesel Brewer

-- 
[email protected]
http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-newbie

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