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Annotation of cci/usr/src/man/man8/dmesg.8, revision 1.1.1.1

1.1       root        1: .TH DMESG 8 "4 February 1983"
                      2: .UC 4
                      3: .SH NAME
                      4: dmesg \- collect system diagnostic messages to form error log
                      5: .SH SYNOPSIS
                      6: .B /etc/dmesg
                      7: [ \- ]
                      8: .SH DESCRIPTION
                      9: .I Dmesg
                     10: looks in a system buffer for recently printed diagnostic messages
                     11: and prints them on the standard output.
                     12: The messages are those printed by the system when device (hardware) errors
                     13: occur and (occasionally) when system tables overflow non-fatally.
                     14: If the
                     15: .B \-
                     16: flag is given, then
                     17: .I dmesg
                     18: computes (incrementally) the new messages since the last time it
                     19: was run and places these on the standard output.
                     20: This is typically used with
                     21: .IR cron (8)
                     22: to produce the error log
                     23: .I /usr/adm/messages
                     24: by running the command
                     25: .IP
                     26: /etc/dmesg \- >> /usr/adm/messages
                     27: .LP
                     28: every 10 minutes.
                     29: .SH FILES
                     30: .ta 2i
                     31: /usr/adm/messages      error log (conventional location)
                     32: .br
                     33: /usr/adm/msgbuf        scratch file for memory of \- option
                     34: .SH BUGS
                     35: The system error message buffer is of small finite size.  As
                     36: .I dmesg
                     37: is run only every few minutes, not all error messages
                     38: are guaranteed to be logged.  This can be construed as a blessing rather
                     39: than a curse.
                     40: .PP
                     41: Error diagnostics generated immediately before a system crash will
                     42: never get logged.

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