Sometimes it a good idea to check or just store contents of the virtual console terminal (/dev/vcs[1-63] device).
To print its contents, execute the command:
$ sudo cat /dev/vcs2 | fold --width 80 | \
sed -e 's/ *$//g' | sed -e '/^$/N;/\n$/d' | sed -e '${G}'CentOS release 5.7 (Final)
Kernel 2.6.18-274.7.1.el5 on an x86_64
home login:
Depending on the console dimensions width parameter needs to be adjusted.
$ sudo cat /dev/vcs4 | fold --width 170 | \
sed -e 's/ *$//g' | sed -e '/^$/N;/\n$/d' | sed -e '${G}'Ubuntu 11.10 notebook tty4
notebook login: milosz
Password:
Login timed out after 60 seconds.
Ubuntu 11.10 notebook tty4
notebook login:If you don’t care about empty lines at the end, then use a shorter version:
$ sudo cat /dev/vcs5 | fold --width 170 | sed -e '${G}'milosz@notebook:~/VirtualBox VMs/Ubuntu$ file *
Logs: directory
Ubuntu.vbox: XML document text
Ubuntu.vbox-prev: XML document text
Ubuntu.vdi: data
milosz@notebook:~/VirtualBox VMs/Ubuntu$ ls -1 /
bin
boot
cdrom
dev
etc
home
initrd.img
initrd.img.old
lib
lib32
lib64
lost+found
media
mnt
opt
proc
root
run
sbin
selinux
srv
sys
tmp
usr
var
vmlinuz
vmlinuz.old
milosz@notebook:~/VirtualBox VMs/Ubuntu$ pwd
/home/milosz/VirtualBox VMs/Ubuntu
milosz@notebook:~/VirtualBox VMs/Ubuntu$
[...]