reading boot messages

[Wu-Kung Sun]

Hello all,
how can I read the boot messages?  I've had some big problems today
which I'll use other emails for but now when I reboot, suddenly
ifconfig reports a ppp0 and ppp1.  Before I only had a ppp0.  I got
some sort of ppp error with instructions but I can't read it fast
enough.  I can't see it switching to tty1 and dmesg doesn't reveal the
information.  Any help?
-- 
swk