printk messges in log file

[Thomas Beckett]

Upon inspecting /var/log/messages I am getting masses of entries such as

kernel: printk: 8 messages suppressed.
kernel: printk: 58 messages suppressed.
kernel: printk: 67 messages suppressed.

with anything from 6 to 90 messages suppressed at a time.
I have done a bit of digging to see what they mean but they as they
are just kernel messages I need to see what they actually are to
diagnose the problem (I think it may be linked to the machine hanging
a couple of times per day).
I did echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/printk_ratelimit as I was under the
impression that this would dissable the supression and print the
messages. after wating in front of a tail -f /var/log/messages they
started apearing again as messages suppressed so my question is how
can I dissable the message suppression to see what the messages are?

Many thanks for the help

Tom