dmesg not working on new system

[Chris Maness]

On Mon, 5 Jun 2006, doug wrote:

> A couple of things you can try: turn on the all.log line in syslog.conf; and, 
> mkae sure syslog.conf and newsyslog.conf match the source tree. If all that 
> looks okay, do a boot verbose (I forget the syntax). If you are getting any 
> warning or status messages that could cause this either the all.log or the 
> boot should show them.
>

There are no deltas between the two files and there originals from the 
source tree.  I administer this box via remote shell (ssh).  Is there a 
way to boot in verbose mode via a remote connection?