Verbose Initscripts

lousyd · Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2005 10:59 pm Post subject: Verbose Initscripts

There must be some way (and I'd think it'd be documented somewhere) to view verbose initscript output. I had a problem today with getting networking working on a new install of Gentoo. I would type "/etc/init.d/net.eth0 start" and it would say it was starting, but then spit out those two red exclamation marks. Yeah, so, it doesn't work. Why not? It'd be helpful to know why not. It turns out I hadn't loaded the module for the network card. So, a helpful error message would have been "no network card found", or some such. But, of course, Gentoo init doesn't always give error messages, and certainly didn't on this one.

How would I track down a problem like that? How can I ask an initscript to tell me why it won't work? "/etc/init.d/net.eth0 start --verbose" would be nice.
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Minds are like parachutes... Most people will do their damnedest to avoid having to use one.

DarrenM · Posted: Tue Apr 05, 2005 12:10 am Post subject:

All the messages are written to text files in /var/log Mostly to /var/log/syslog

"tail -n 20 /var/log/syslog" Will show you the last 20 lines in the file.

lousyd · Posted: Tue Apr 05, 2005 5:25 pm Post subject:

I checked, and I don't have a syslog. It was in "/var/log/messages" though. "Device not recognized" or some such. Thanks for the pointer, DarrenM.

You'd have to know what you were looking for, though. It'd be nice if there were a "--verbose" option, with admin-readable output. I don't know... Maybe it's better this way?
_________________
Minds are like parachutes... Most people will do their damnedest to avoid having to use one.