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I'm using Lubuntu 11.10. Every time I turn off my Sony Vaio I can read FAIL in red letters. But I can not read. I tried to take a photo, but not success.

Well, I was not worrying about this but today my laptop frozen during shutting down. I could read something about umount and other messages that I don't remember.

So, how to read the log messages and try to discover/solve the problem?

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3 Answers

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Easiest solution might be to try taking a video instead of a photograph. You can step through it frame-by-frame later.

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I can not believe that there is no file with those messages recorded!!! I'll try to record by video. – Sigur Oct 29 '12 at 23:59
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Some of those messages are printed after filesystems are unmounted! So they can't all end up in a file. – Jim Paris Oct 30 '12 at 0:31
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Take a look at this answer on askubuntu. It may help you with your problem.

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Thanks, but I confess that I didn't understand anything. I don't know if I really need to install all those programs. – Sigur Oct 30 '12 at 0:20
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That probably won't help you -- you appear to be asking about normal shutdown messages printed by ubuntu's init system, whereas that answer is regarding kernel messages printed in case of a kernel error. – Jim Paris Oct 30 '12 at 0:32
Yes. My laptop in fact turns off (except today with a crash). I can read something about xtfs-server or something like this. – Sigur Oct 30 '12 at 0:36
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Seeing the log in real time

I've found that during shutdown there is usually an Ubuntu logo and flashing lights, which is shown instead of a log of the shutdown process. If there are errors, then they're kind of shown, but messily. However, whilst shutting down, if I press the Windows key and r (Metar), then I get to see the success and failure of the system services, as they occur. So then I know what exactly is broken. No idea whether this keyboard shortcut is specific to my Kubuntu setup or what; I didn't add it.. One of those I found by accident, somehow...

Viewing the logs after rebooting

When the system is rebooted, the error messages should be saved into a logfile. Which logfile depends on which service is broken/misconfigured. The relevant log will almost definitely be in /var/log/ (or a subdirectory thereof). ls, less, grep and find have been the only programs I've needed for finding error messages in the logs...

Once you've found the error and the service that caused it, then you shouldn't need to reboot to test the new configuration; just restart the service.. Hopefully you can test the fixed configuration with a command like:

sudo service <service name> restart

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