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Bootlogd records boot messages.

Activate bootlogd

You do this by editing /etc/default/bootlogd, this is not enabled by default:

# Run bootlogd at startup ?
BOOTLOGD_ENABLE=yes

When the system is restarted, userspace messages will be logged to /var/log/boot.

As from Wheezy, the bootlog package is automatically started as a daemon in the normal way (with a sys-V like init.d script). No config file any more.

Reading /var/log/boot file

Parts of a boot message sometimes can be wrapped with an ASCII color sequences, e.g. "failed" string after unsuccessful init action. bootlogd writes ^[ characters to its log file instead of actual ASCII escape character. To view colored strings via less as expected, you must replace ^[ characters with actual escape character and tell less to output ASCII color escape sequences in "raw" form:

sed $'s/\^\[/\E/g' /var/log/boot | less -R

On bootlogd version 2.88 (Wheezy), a date stamp is added in front of the boot message.Consequently, the ok, fail etc. messages overwrite part of the date stamp. The cursor repositioning escape sequence [1G must be replaced by [27G to offset the cursor before printing the ok, fail, info etc. strings.

sed $'s/\^\[/\E/g;s/\[1G\[/\[27G\[/' /var/log/boot

See also

Discussion on howto display the bootlgd generated file