Viewing the ReactOS console with virsh

ReactOS, by default logs to the serial port. If you have installed ReactOS using virsh under Linux, here is how to see the logs:

First find the domain name or the domain ID of your ReactOS VM.

virsh list --all

It says something like

 Id    Name                           State
----------------------------------------------------
 -     lbtest-vm-120                  shut off
 -     ReactOS                        shut off

First you start ReactOS using

virsh start ReactOS

and select ReactOS(Debug) in the boot menu.

Then you can see the console with the command:

virsh console ReactOS

After a few seconds, you should see ReactOS debug messages.

To stop viewing the console, press Ctrl-] (it is the Escape Character).

To view the console and logging into a file you can pipe the command into the UNIX tee utility, as in:

virsh console ReactOS | tee -a mylogfile.txt

(the -a tells tee not to truncate an existing logfile, it appends output to a file if it exists).

Note: Viewing the console works with any OS that logs to a serial port. For example, Linux can be configured to log to the serial port.