# Boot process



## balanga (May 27, 2019)

I'm trying to get an understanding of the FreeBSD boot process which is explained here. I have had experiences with the boot process not running to completion, ie getting to the login prompt, and am trying to devise some sort of procedure for sorting out such problems.
One thing I can't figure out is how to tell whether the system is running loader() or init() and can this be determined from dmesg() or screen output?

Also is there any debugging option which can be used to idenify the exact point in the boot process where a system hangs. If it does hang, would messages up to this point have been written to /var/run/dmesg.boot ?


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## SirDice (May 27, 2019)

Look in /var/log/messages, the /var/run/dmesg.boot is created by the /etc/rc.d/dmesg "service" when the system boots. It can't do that if it hangs before that time. Your best bet is looking at syslogd(8) data, perhaps also enabling *.debug message logging. There are also a bunch 'verbose' and 'debug' options you can enable for loader.conf(5) and rc.conf(5). 



balanga said:


> Also is there any debugging option which can be used to idenify the exact point in the boot process where a system hangs


If the system really "hangs" it can't write anything any more either.


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