The officially official Devuan Forum!

pcalvert

Member

Registered: 2017-05-15

Posts: 252  

Some system messages are not being logged

I have an old Beowulf system (that I am getting ready to retire), and I recently noticed something strange while using it. One of the last messages that is "printed" to the screen before shutting down is, "Stopping early crypto disks". Today I looked for that message in the logs and couldn't find it. I looked in boot, kern.log, kern.log.1, syslog, syslog.1, and a few other logs. It wasn't in any of them.

Is it normal for some system messages to not be logged? Did I look in the wrong place?

---

Freespoke is a new search engine that respects user privacy and does not engage in censorship.
Another one is called Luxxle.

rolfie

Member

Registered: 2017-11-25

Posts: 1,321  

Re: Some system messages are not being logged

How should messages been logged when the system is going down already? Disks have been unmounted already? No way.

pcalvert

Member

Registered: 2017-05-15

Posts: 252  

Re: Some system messages are not being logged

@rolfie

You are absolutely correct. I hadn't thought of that.

What about the message "Stopping early crypto disks"? Is that a message that one can expect to normally see? I'm not using any disk encryption, so that's why I am asking.

---

Freespoke is a new search engine that respects user privacy and does not engage in censorship.
Another one is called Luxxle.

rolfie

Member

Registered: 2017-11-25

Posts: 1,321  

Re: Some system messages are not being logged

I regularly see this "Stopping early crypto disks" during system shutdown. But I consequently use encryption. Tells me the system is mostly down, and now cryptodisks are being closed as one of the last steps in the shutdown process.

Maybe this is a step that happens all the time? I don't know.

Altoid

Member

Registered: 2017-05-07

Posts: 1,861  

Re: Some system messages are not being logged

Hello:

... "Stopping early crypto disks" ...
... expect to normally see?
... not using any disk encryption ...

In a normal and properly configured non-systemd Linux installation, log files are your best friends.

Check your /var/log/daemon.log, /var/log/messages, /var/log/syslog and /var/log/user.log files for that specific string.
ie: 'early crypto disks' or 'starting' and 'stopping'

The data you need is there.

eg: the user.log printout on the activity of my local headless VM reads:

Oct 10 23:00:09 devuan vboxdrv.sh: Stopping VirtualBox services. 
--- snip ---
Oct 11 06:32:23 devuan vboxdrv.sh: Starting VirtualBox services.
Oct 11 06:32:24 devuan vboxautostart-service.sh: Starting VirtualBox VMs configured for autostart.

As you can see, it informs me of what went on at boot, shutdown and which script was responsible.
vboxdrv.sh and vboxautostart-service.sh.

I can find the same in messages and syslog.
Once you know which script is generating the start / stop sequence for the 'crypto disks' bit, Bob's your uncle.

Like I wrote early on, I don't use any disk encryption and would not expect to see that string anywhere in my system logs.
I think that whatever is going on in your system is indeed related to some full disk encryption setup of which you are not aware of.

Let us know what you discover.

Best,

A.

Last edited by Altoid (2025-10-11 12:07:52)

g4sra

Member

Registered: 2018-12-12

Posts: 53  

Re: Some system messages are not being logged

dpkg -l cryptsetup

Last edited by g4sra (2025-10-11 13:08:52)

pcalvert

Member

Registered: 2017-05-15

Posts: 252  

Re: Some system messages are not being logged

Thanks for all of the suggestions. I think I found the most likely explanation for why I am seeing that message:

$ whereis cryptsetup
cryptsetup: /sbin/cryptsetup /lib/cryptsetup /usr/share/cryptsetup /usr/share/man/man8/cryptsetup.8.gz

$ aptitude why cryptsetup
i   refracta2usb Recommends cryptsetup

---

Freespoke is a new search engine that respects user privacy and does not engage in censorship.
Another one is called Luxxle.