DragonFlyBSD

:Issue #2275 has been reported by Robin Carey.
:
:...
:Dear DragonFlyBSD bugs,
:
:I have noticed (on leaf.dragonflybsd.org) that the:
:
:/var/run/dmesg.boot
:
:file contains a lot of "garbage" (presumably from the
:system console) aswell as boot data.
:
:On FreeBSD there is no "garbage" - the file just contains
:the data produced from booting.
:
:I assume the FreeBSD method is the correct one.

It depends whether the contents of ram is retained across a
reboot. Leaf is running on hardware where the contents of ram
is highly likely to survive a reboot, and because of this
the dmesg output can contain information from prior reboots,
including console data and sometimes actual garbage, depending.

This is the desireable behavior as it can sometimes provide
valuable information as to why a system might have crashed.

On systems where ram is cleared on reboot (typically by the bios),
or which does not survive a reboot, you will only get the kernel
boot data. Since the dmesg.boot file is created shortly after
boot it will not contain additional messages output to the console
after the boot sequence.

-Matt