Linux Tutorial: How to Show Realtime dmesg Output in Linux

Last Update: Mar 25, 2023

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There are many times in Linux you want to watch your dmesg output, especially when working with hardware to see what’s going on.

There is actually a really easy to way to do this, simply open another terminal and type:

tail -f /var/log/messages

This will show you the last messages posted in realtime. This could go for any log you want actually, and works great.

Also some distrosl have “tailf” which does the same thing.

tailf /var/log/messages

Also you can pipe your kernel output to another terminal. Open /etc/syslog.conf and add the following line:

kern.*          /dev/tty10

This allows you to switch to that terminal to see the kernel output.

I hope this helps!

Published: Sep 28, 2011 by Jeremy Morgan. Contact me before republishing this content.