Would you want something like this? Unfortunately the following code was written for a non-standard libc, so it might (will) require some tweaking to get it to compile. /* * GPLv2 (c) Copyright 1999-2005 by Maciej Zenczykowski. * * Program redirects all kernel messages to tty1 * (the first virtual terminal). */ #include <stdio.h> #include <unistd.h> #include <sys/types.h> #include <sys/stat.h> #include <fcntl.h> #include <sys/ioctl.h> int main() { int fd, res; char table[2]; table[0] = 11; // TIOCLINUX 11 -> set_kernel_message_redirect table[1] = 1; // ttyN=1, 0 to turn off redirection fd = open("/dev/tty0", O_RDONLY, 0); if (fd < 0) { fprintf(stderr, "ERROR #%d: open_console /dev/tty0\n", errno); return 1; }; res = ioctl(fd, TIOCLINUX, &table); if (res < 0) { fprintf(stderr, "ERROR #%d: set_kmsg_redirect\n", errno); close(fd); return 2; }; close(fd); return 0; };