[PLUG] Where Are Login Messages?

[chris (fool) mccraw]

On Sat, Jan 29, 2011 at 17:01, Rich Shepard <rshepard at appl-ecosys.com> wrote:
>   When I log in to the system some messages flash on the console before I
> get the user prompt. One of these messages is a warning of something not as
> it should be. These log in messages are not in /var/log/messages. Where can
> I find them?

so, my guess is that these messages are actually caused by something
in your login scrips (.login, .profile, et al).  of course those are
rarely the only thing that runs on login--there are usually system
versions in /.etc that run too.

perhaps a binary is suddenly missing, or a syntax error was introduced
somehow, or a thousand other possibilities..

anyhow that stuff won't get syslogged unless you've done something
special and kind of crazy like redirected stdout of those startup
scripts to the logger(1) command...

on to solutions: it seems like something is clearing your screen while
those scripts run and it could be a zillion things, but perhaps you
could slow things down so that you get a chance to read the messages
by inserting some 'sleep 5' commands at the beginning and end of your
shell startup files?  don't forget to login and test the changes
*before logging out* of another session in case you end up creating a
syntax error that screws things up (further =)), so your functional
window can be used to undo the madness.

somehow that answer was longer than it needed to be, but i hope it made sense..