Unix for Advanced Users

7. Viewing System Information

7.2. The Health/Status of the System

7.2.5 Where is all that boot-time gobblygook? dmesg

Boot-time messages fly across screens of all but the slowest computers. You can replay them at any time with dmesg. Displayed are the kernel version and all hardware detected by the kernel, including information such as slots, io addresses, interrupts, scsi id's, etc.

Here is sample output from a Sun Sparc.

Jun 29 09:32
0> major <39> minor <0>
ledma0 at sbus0: SBus0 slot 0xe offset 0x8400010
le0 at ledma0: SBus0 slot 0xe offset 0x8c00000 Onboard device sparc9 ipl 6
le0 is /sbus@1f,0/ledma@e,8400010/le@e,8c00000
dump on /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s3 size 131456K
syncing file systems...cpu0: SUNW,UltraSPARC (upaid 0 impl 0x10 ver 0x22 clock 1
43 MHz)
SunOS Release 5.6 Version Generic_105181-13 [UNIX(R) System V Release 4.0]
Copyright (c) 1983-1997, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
mem = 65536K (0x4000000)
avail mem = 60833792
Ethernet address = 9:9:99:82:99:99
root nexus = Sun Ultra 1 SBus (UltraSPARC 143MHz)
sbus0 at root: UPA 0x1f 0x0 ...
espdma0 at sbus0: SBus0 slot 0xe offset 0x8400000
esp0:   esp-options=0x46^M
esp0 at espdma0: SBus0 slot 0xe offset 0x8800000 Onboard device sparc9 ipl 4
sd0 at esp0: target 0 lun 0
sd0 is /sbus@1f,0/espdma@e,8400000/esp@e,8800000/sd@0,0
        
sd6 at esp0: target 6 lun 0
sd6 is /sbus@1f,0/espdma@e,8400000/esp@e,8800000/sd@6,0
root on /sbus@1f,0/espdma@e,8400000/esp@e,8800000/sd@0,0:a fstype ufs
zs0 at sbus0: SBus0 slot 0xf offset 0x1100000 Onboard device sparc9 ipl 12
zs0 is /sbus@1f,0/zs@f,1100000
zs1 at sbus0: SBus0 slot 0xf offset 0x1000000 Onboard device sparc9 ipl 12
zs1 is /sbus@1f,0/zs@f,1000000
keyboard is  major <29> minor <2>
mouse is  major <29> minor <3>
stdin is  major <29> minor <2>
cgsix0 at sbus0: SBus0 slot 0x0 offset 0x0 SBus level 5 sparc9 ipl 9
cgsix0 is /sbus@1f,0/cgsix@0,0
cgsix0: screen 1152x900, single buffered, 1M mappable, rev 11
stdout is  major <39> minor <0>
ledma0 at sbus0: SBus0 slot 0xe offset 0x8400010
le0 at ledma0: SBus0 slot 0xe offset 0x8c00000 Onboard device sparc9 ipl 6
le0 is /sbus@1f,0/ledma@e,8400010/le@e,8c00000
dump on /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s3 size 131456K
syncing file systems...cpu0: SUNW,UltraSPARC (upaid 0 impl 0x10 ver 0x22 clock 1
43 MHz)