Logout/shutdown messages

bluesky46 · June 20, 2010, 6:17pm

Can anybody let me know how to record/save logout/shutdown messages for OpenSuse 11.2.

hcvv · June 20, 2010, 9:59pm

As shorter the question as more riddles to those who want to answer.

There is a big difference between logout and shutdown.

Logout can be done in a GUI (KDE/Gnome/…) or in a terminal session by many people at many times during the time the system is running. What messages do you mean there? E.g. when I log out from a terminal, I get:

mgi@boven:~> exit
logout

Not much to record there imho. And when I log out from KDE, I do not get any messages, I do get the log in screen.

Maybe you mean the messages shown on the console during system shutdown. You can see logging about your last shutdown in /var/log/boot.omsg. The first (and bigger) part is about the startup before the last shutdown and the last part is about the shutdown.

HTH

bluesky46 · June 21, 2010, 12:07am

hcvv thank you for your prompt reply. Yes I was interested in the system shutdown messages. However, as far as I can tell the file boot.omsg does not mirror the shutdown messages. I seem to have some failures indicated during the shutdown but these do not appear to be recorded in the file. I was hoping that I could freeze the scrolling or interrupt the shutdown to look at the details of the message. Is this possible ?

hcvv · June 21, 2010, 10:58am

Your wish is clear tome now :), but not easy to answer. (I hope others may shoo up with an easy answer).

Forst one has to understand that the shutdown command is a sort of wrapper around a sequence of actions. After it sends wanrning messages to all loged in sessions, it uses

init

to change the runlevel (to 0) and init starts a lot of /etc/init.d/<some-script> stop processes. That is where you see a lot of lines for each of these processes ending in a green “done”. And at the end the halt or reboot programs are called.

All the output goes directly to the console in the assumption that nothing else will be alive at the end. I have found solutions in using an async device (the COM port) as a console (which is not difficult to do software wise), but then you must have a device at the COM port to catch the output.

Hm, I hope for someone with a better solution then hitting the Esc key and reading like mad >:(

wakou · June 21, 2010, 11:14am

Bluesky, I hope you don’t mind me hitchhiking on your thread but I have a similar question and something Henk says refers to it, and might, I suspect, also be what you are after:

I have on one of my machines on shutdown a number of red warning/failed messages, where the green “done” should be, and would like to read a log to find out more about them…

DenverD · June 21, 2010, 11:10am

hcvv wrote:
> Hm, I hope for someone with a better solution then hitting the Esc key
> and reading like mad >:(

set your camera on a tripod, perfectly focused and steady on the
screen, then start recording a movie and THEN “hitting the Esc key and
reading like” you want to, slow and easy by pausing the movie playback…

hcvv · June 21, 2010, 11:32am

As I see a lot of messages ending in “done” in /var/log/boot.omsg I you may have a look there. The lines with the “done” look a bit strange there, but I assume tthat is because of the lay-out ro show them neatly (and coloured) on the screen spoils the layout in the file.

There is also some logging in* /var/log /messages.*

knurpht · June 21, 2010, 11:51am

You could also try to set “FLOW_CONTROL” to “yes” in Yast-System-/etc/sysconfig editor. That brings Ctrl-S and Ctrl-Q interact during boot (and shutdown?, will try right now)

Edit: works during shutdown. To have a good glance at what’s happening, logout, then hit Ctrl-Alt-F1, login as ‘root’ and do:


init 6

This initiates a reboot. Ctrl-S stops the procedure. Ctrl-Q continues.

Hope this helps you.

wakou · June 21, 2010, 11:59am

Nice tip Knurphty!, I am trying it now too!

hcvv · June 21, 2010, 12:00pm

@Knurpht. Nice!

You could then take pictures instead of a movie!

knurpht · June 21, 2010, 12:11pm

On AT&T UNIX System V, this was on by default. If we hit the PrtScrn button on the console (some 4370 terminal), the line printer would spit out a screen shot, which could be faxed to the support center.

bluesky46 · June 21, 2010, 6:06pm

What a team, thank you all for your contributions.
hcw
yes you are right ‘done’ messages were recorded but for some reason the ‘failed’ message did not show up.
Knurpht
just what I was looking for and with the print screen, perfect. Already sorted the failed message.
Again thanks for the help.
:)

hcvv · June 21, 2010, 7:38pm

That is what the forums are for. Alltogether we know more then every individual.

DenverD · June 21, 2010, 7:52pm

hcvv wrote:
> All together we know more then every individual.

sometimes i pretend to not know, so speak for yourself!