Bug#597467: sysvinit-utils: [BOOTLOG] All messages are not saved

[Jesse Smith]

On 2025-02-25 06:21, Mark Hindley wrote:
> Control: tags -1 upstream
>
> Frédéric,
>
> Thanks for this and apologies for the excessive delay.
>
> On Mon, Sep 20, 2010 at 12:33:27AM +0200, Frédéric MASSOT wrote:
>> Package: sysvinit-utils
>> Version: 2.88dsf-12
>> Severity: normal
>>
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> There are messages that appears on the console during
>> the boot which are not recorded anywhere.
>>
>> In the log file "/var/log/boot" it is only the messages
>> of starts of rc scripts, the warning and errors are not
>> recorded.
>>
>> I see messages on the console that correspond to
>> rc scripts, but they are neither in the log file
>> "/var/log/boot" or syslog.
>>
>> Below the contents of the file "/var/log/boot",
>> from what I see on the screen there are missing
>> messages from udev and other rc scripts.
> I wonder if the missing messages are on stderr and  are being missed by
> bootlogd.
>
> Jesse,
>
> Do you have any thoughts here?
>
>

I have a few thoughts. It's a little tricky to track down exactly what 
is happening here without having a comparison between what is seen on 
the screen and what is showing up in the boot log file. Knowing 
something specific like "udev busying, waiting 30 seconds" was showing 
up on the screen and not in the log would give us a starting point to 
track down _why_ something is missing.

I suspect though your guess is correct. bootlogd, if I remember 
correctly, logs anything sent to /dev/console. If a service or script is 
sending information somewhere else (and it happens to be echoed to the 
screen) then bootlogd would have no knowledge of it. Any program that 
was echoing to stderr or directly to a TTY would possibly bypass 
/dev/console and avoid having its output logged.

- Jesse

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