The place to look for what happened in the failed boot is in /var/log/syslog
, and possibly other files in /var/log
. However this only works if the logging service (syslogd
) had a chance to start. In your other question, you mention an hwclock
-related freeze, and hwclock
is first executed before syslogd
, so maybe no logs were written.
The boot and shutdown scripts are in /etc/init.d
. Which ones are executed and when depends on symbolic links in /etc/rc?.d
. First the system boot scripts linked from /etc/rcS.d
are executed, then the ones in /etc/rc2.d
, and the number after the S
in the name of the symbolic link determines the order in which the scripts are executed. If your system uses Upstart, scripts in /etc/init
are also executed, in an order determined from dependency declarations.
If your system freezes when setting the clock, chances are that you need to add --directisa
or some other obscure option on the hwclock
command line somewhere in /etc/init*/hwclock*
.