Preserving early console output (pre-Copyright stuff)

[Paul Goyette <paul%whooppee.com@localhost>]

I'm trying to debug some stuff on a new server, and there are some 
"messages of interest" that get printf'd on the console very early in 
the system's life, before the "Copyright (c)..." lines.  There is a 
large amount of info being printed, way more than a screenful and way 
more than can be captured with an eyeball snapshot.  Unfortunately, it 
seems that this information is NOT retained in the kernel's message 
buffer, so it never gets collected by syslog.  (For those who want to 
know details, some of the messages in question are generated by 
add_mem_cluster() in src/sys/arch/x86/x86/x86_machdep.c)

So, is there either

a) a way to capture these messages in the normal message buffer for 
later collection by syslog, or

b) a way to pause long enough to manually transcribe the output?  (A 
simple timed delay would work, although a "Press any key to continue" 
would be easier!)

Thanks in advance!


-------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Paul Goyette     | PGP Key fingerprint:     | E-mail addresses:       |
| Customer Service | FA29 0E3B 35AF E8AE 6651 | paul at whooppee.com    |
| Network Engineer | 0786 F758 55DE 53BA 7731 | pgoyette at juniper.net |
| Kernel Developer |                          | pgoyette at netbsd.org  |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------