[ale] CD Burning / Kernel Panic

[Danny Cox]

Geoffrey,

On Thu, 2002-08-08 at 09:13, Geoffrey wrote:
> Which prompts the question...  How do folks capture panic info?  I've 
> never been able to locate it in a log file, which kinda makes sense I 
> guess.  Whenever I wanted to do something like ksymoops, I'd literally 
> type the bloody thing in by hand.

	Well, sometimes, a "non-fatal" oops will show up in syslog.  In other
cases, you need to be running on a system with console directed to it's
serial port (lilo: linux console=ttyS0,115200n8), and use minicom on
another system to view the output.  It's an easy cut-n-paste from there.

	On a stand-alone system, I know of no other way.

	Back in ancient times, most UNIX systems would, on a panic, store their
kernel memory image in swap.  On a reboot, before turning on swap, a
program looked for the "core magic bytes" in swap, and copy it to a
file, usually in /var/core or somesuch, along with a copy of /vmunix. 
Just imagine when /var filled up from execssive panics and many programs
refused to start (X, for one ;-).

-- 
kernel, n.: A part of an operating system that preserves the
medieval traditions of sorcery and black art.

Danny


---
This message has been sent through the ALE general discussion list.
See http://www.ale.org/mailing-lists.shtml for more info. Problems should be 
sent to listmaster at ale dot org.