Linux – How to add message that will be read with dmesg

dmesglinuxsyslog

I am trying to write some custom messages in my dmesg output. I tried:

logger "Hello"

but this does not work. It exits without error, but no "Hello" appears int the output of:

dmesg

I am using a Fedora 9, and it seems that there is no syslogd/klogd daemon running. However, all my kernel messages are succesfully written in the dmesg buffer.

Any idea?

Best Answer

dmesg displays what is in the kernel buffer, whereas logger is for syslogd. I think if you want to print things into the kernel buffer you will need to create a driver that uses the printk() kernel function. If you just want it in /var/log/messages, then with a "normal" setup I think what you have done with logger is already fine.

The most basic example of a driver with printk() would be:

hello.c:

#include <linux/module.h>
#include <linux/kernel.h>

int init_module(void)
{
    printk(KERN_INFO "Hello world\n");
    return 0;
}

void cleanup_module(void)
{
    printk(KERN_INFO "Goodbye world\n");

}

Makefile:

obj-m += hello.o

all:
    make -C /lib/modules/$(shell uname -r)/build M=$(PWD) modules

Then:

$ make
$ sudo insmod hello.ko
$ dmesg | tail -n1
 [7089996.746366] Hello world

http://tldp.org/LDP/lkmpg/2.6/html/lkmpg.html#AEN121 for more...

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