Display or control the kernel ring buffer.
The dmesg command is used to examine or control the kernel ring buffer. The kernel stores boot-up messages in this ring buffer. If you miss the messages during boot, you can use dmesg to view them later. Boot messages are also saved in the /var/log/dmesg file.
dmesg (options)
-c Clear the ring buffer after printing its contents.
-s <size> Set the size of the buffer used to query the kernel ring buffer. The default is 8196.
-n <level> Set the level at which logging of messages is done to the console.
[root@localhost ~]# dmesg | head
Linux version 2.6.18-348.6.1.el5 (mockbuild@builder17.centos.org) (gcc version 4.1.2 20080704 (Red Hat 4.1.2-54)) #1 SMP Tue May 21 15:34:22 EDT 2013
BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
BIOS-e820: 0000000000010000 - 000000000009f400 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 000000000009f400 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 00000000000f0000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 000000007f590000 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 000000007f590000 - 000000007f5e3000 (ACPI NVS)
BIOS-e820: 000000007f5e3000 - 000000007f5f0000 (ACPI data)
BIOS-e820: 000000007f5f0000 - 000000007f600000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 00000000e0000000 - 00000000e8000000 (reserved)
View basic hard disk information:
dmesg | grep sda
[ 2.442555] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 488281250 512-byte logical blocks: (250 GB/232 GiB)
[ 2.442590] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
[ 2.442592] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
[ 2.442607] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
[ 2.447533] sda: sda1
[ 2.448503] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI disk
Search for multiple keywords:
dmesg | grep -E "vcc5v0_host|vcc_3v3_s0|ttyS"
[ 1.193143] vcc5v0_host: supplied by vcc5v0_usb
[ 1.481139] feb80000.serial: ttyS5 at MMIO 0xfeb80000 (irq = 73, base_baud = 1500000) is a 16550A
[ 1.513541] vcc_3v3_s0: supplied by vcc5v0_sys