I was just informed that dmesg has never been mentioned publically

Basically the kernel diags (things like boot messages and register
dumps after panics) are stored in the last page of memory.  These
messages survive reboot so that if you have to get at them you can.
The utility of choice is dmesg.  Which prints this memory out.  Thus
if you get a panic with a register dump, instead of copying it down
by hand you can simply reboot and then redirect dmesg to a file.

Chris.

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