If you don't have it automatically start X, you can shift-PageUp to see the boot messages. This is often much more convenient than digging through log files and such. Unfortunately, the version of getty you're using clears the screen before displaying the login prompt. Hence, many of the latter boot messages are erased. The solution is to print a bunch of blank lines at the end of the boot sequence. It should use curses or something like that to determine how many lines are necessary for those of us who use odd text modes.
If this bothers you, you can add --noclear to the arguments for mingetty in /etc/inittab.