[Techtalk] kernel panic

[Rudy Zijlstra]

Op zondag 26-10-2008 om 21:30 uur [tijdzone -0700], schreef Maria
McKinley:
> Rudy Zijlstra wrote:
> > Op donderdag 23-10-2008 om 09:24 uur [tijdzone -0700], schreef Maria
> > McKinley:
> >> Hello there,
> >>
> >> I had a mail server have a kernel panic this morning, and I am trying to 
> >> find out what happened, but it seems totally mysterious. The last entry 
> >> in the log is a standard postfix disconnect. All systems seemed fine 
> >> right before the panic:
> >>
> >> http://www.shadlen.org/munin/Servers/ella.shadlen.org.html
> >>
> >> None of the partitions or drives are remotely close to being full. There 
> >> may have been a network outage around the time of the panic, but this 
> >> should not have caused a kernel panic. This machines runs a mail server, 
> >> web server, and bind9. It booted back up just fine, and seems to be 
> >> working happily now.
> >>
> >> Is there something I should be logging that I am not, or something else 
> >> that may give me a clue as to why this happened?
> > 
> > Hi Maria,
> > 
> > I am impressed by all that you log.
> > 
> > I fear though, that this is a case where the information on the console
> > is of crucial import. 
> > 
> > If you start getting this more often, and you are running with X
> > enabled, then i would suggest to enable either network console logging

OK, sorry for the unclear sentence. My intention here was to say that X
would remove any ability to actually see the panic information. 


> > or serial console. In both cases you can capture the kernel panic dump.
> > It is the dump on the console that contains the information to trace
> > which aspect caused the panic. Without this, all you can do is guess.
> > 
> > Cheers,
> > 
> > 
> > Rudy
> > 
> > (who has had some kernel panics.. )
> 
> Thanks Rudy.
> 
> This is a server, so I don't have X enabled, as I don't really have user 
> accounts on it. Anybody know of a way to log the kernel panic dump that 
> doesn't involve X? I've always wondered if there was a way to log this 
> stuff.
> 

The two methods above are both not using X. They often do need a kernel
recompile, or booting with other parameters to enable them. 

If you have problems, and more then one machine available, both serial
console logging as network console logging are good solutions, as they
allow you to capture the panic information in a digital way (without
having to write them down, or take a pic of the screen). 


> thanks,
> maria
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