shutdown and startup logging

[Tim Nelson]

Maybe I am missing something simple but.....

how to capture the boot/reboot logs ?

HPUX pushes all output of the scripts during shutdown and startup to /etc/rc.log

is there something similar in RHEL 5.x ?

once upon a time there linux used /var/log/boot.log but it looks depreciated .

any thoughts appreciated.

[Matti_Kurkela · Accepted solution]

This is a long-standing bug in RHEL5. For some reason, RedHat has tagged it as WONTFIX in RHEL 5.x series.

See the RedHat Bugzilla entry:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=223446

It includes a workaround, with a caveat that your console will be flooded with "WARNING: initlog is deprecated..." messages.

If you care enough, you might get the source RPM for the package that includes initlog, comment out the deprecation warning, and build yourself a custom binary RPM.

(That reminds me... one of these days I need to check if boot.log or something equivalent works in RHEL 6, and if the workaround is still applicable to RHEL 5.6 that just came out.)

MK

[dirk dierickx]

i'm thinking it must be possible to block those 'WARNING: initlog is deprecated and will be removed in a future release' messages from the console by redirecting error messages to /dev/null.

so the line (from the bugzilla entry);

initlog $INITLOG_ARGS -n $0 -s "$1" -e 1

would need to be;

initlog $INITLOG_ARGS -n $0 -s "$1" -e 1 2> /dev/null

[Tim Nelson]

Thanks guys !!

I am doing some testing to see if I cannot simply tee the startups in /etc/rc.d/rc to a log files.

It may not be perfect but I am having an issue where 1 or more shutdown scripts is not running and I at least need to catch the message..

If that fails I may move onto what Matti mentioned, although I hate to add one more thing to my list that I have manually manage.

Will post any results if I find something.

[Tim Nelson]

I was able to redirect some simple logging to a file during boot.

in /etc/rc add "|tee -a filename" (no quotes) to the end of the start and stop lines found in the "# Now run the START scripts" and the # # First, run the KILL scripts." sections.

and btw, I found my real issue with the help of this logging.

if /var/lock/subsys/<script_name> does not exist then the kill script will be skipped.

(at least on RHEL 5.3 and newer.)

[Tim Nelson]

I found an alternate solution.

ILO2 and ILO3 have a screen recorder option.

enable in the settings section of remote console.

you will then have a "camera" icon in the top toolbar of your integrated console.

click to start recording and select a file location.

click again when you are done.

you can then use the HP ILO player (found on biz support site) to view your recording.