Startup Configuration

This documents the boot process in Gentoo Linux.

Obtaining a log of the boot messages

• This is actually difficult. dmesg will give you a log of the kernel messages, and emerging a log system (and activating it, you need to add the init script to a runlevel) will also give you some information. But getting a complete log of the init scripts messages is hard.

• You can still get some information by editing /etc/conf.d/rc, changing RC_BOOTLOG="yes" and emerging the package showconsole. The log file will be written to /var/log/boot.msg. But it will miss some parts of the boot process - that's normal.

udev activating services

• If udev is activating services you don't want (and possibly also loading kernel modules), try to change RC_COLDPLUG value in /etc/conf.d/rc (and possibly RC_HOTPLUG too).