To view your bootup messages, open a terminal (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal in Ubuntu 10.04 etc.) and type:

dmesg

There can be a lot of information, so I like to use less to navigate through the message:

dmesg | less

(Use the spacebar to advance the text and ‘q’ to quit.)

If you want to save all the information to a file so that you can send it to someone or post it online, you can type:

dmesg > whatever_you_want_to_call_the_file

If you’ve just opened a terminal, you’re probably in your home directory; that’s where the file will appear.

(Make sure you don’t use the name of an existing file. If you want to check what other files are in your current directory, type ls on the command line.)

Various logs can be found here:

/var/log

They can be read by opening a terminal (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal in Ubuntu 10.04, etc.) and typing:

cd /var/log
less name_of_logfile

(Use the space bar to go to the next page; type ‘q’ to quit.)

Most of the files in /var/log can also be viewed using Ubuntu’s Log File Viewer. In 10.04, this is found by navigating to System -> Administration -> Log File Viewer from the taskbar. There is a menu listing the available logs on the left-hand side of the Log File Viewer; click on the name of a file to view it.