How do you monitor startup messages in Ubuntu?

[Paul Johnson]

I feel uncomfortable that Ubuntu just shows a logo and a progress bar.
 Sometimes, after a kernel upgrade or package install, it is important
to read the startup messages to see if modules fail to load or such.
That's the only way to know, as far as I can tell, without grepping
about at random in /var/log.

Example: kernel upgrade occurs, and openafs kernel module needs to be
manually rebuilt.  With the standard Ubuntu logo glowing in beautiful
orange, I have no way of knowing until the user logs in and can't
access her afs files.

Example: after the install of lm-sensors, one is supposed to manually
run the sensor detector program.  The startup process tells you so,
but in Ubuntu you can't see it.

In other Linuxes I've used, there's a button or something to click on
to display the startup messages.  Ubuntu got that?

pj

-- 
Paul E. Johnson
Professor, Political Science
1541 Lilac Lane, Room 504
University of Kansas