How do I save error message from console?

Question

My laptop crashes (which is another question) and when it does so it swiches to a text console and outputs an error which is too long to type (like this). I can't do anything with it other than sometimes restart X (otherwise restart the computer) when it crashes. Is there any way I can get this error so I can post it? A log somewhere? I've tried SSH and conspy, but networking seems to get cut off.

Answer 1

If you can restart X, then it is X that's crashing, not the computer. Look at your X logs in /var/log/Xorg*.

Answer 2

If you start a new X session, the message you are looking for is probably in /var/log/Xorg.0.log.old I suggest you paste the entire file (it's a long paste) and not the part that looks relevant to you.

Answer 3

In the end, I was able to get this specfic error by ssh'ing in and running

tail -f /var/log/syslog

.