From owner-cvs-all@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Jan 20 20:15:30 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: cvs-all@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 86F9116A4CF for ; Tue, 20 Jan 2004 20:15:30 -0800 (PST) Received: from root.org (root.org [67.118.192.226]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 232BF43D53 for ; Tue, 20 Jan 2004 20:15:24 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from nate@root.org) Received: (qmail 99832 invoked by uid 1000); 21 Jan 2004 04:15:26 -0000 Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 20:15:26 -0800 (PST) From: Nate Lawson To: Robert Watson In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20040120201442.J99547@root.org> References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII cc: wpaul@FreeBSD.org cc: src-committers@FreeBSD.org cc: phk@FreeBSD.org cc: bde@zeta.org.au cc: cvs-src@FreeBSD.org cc: Don Lewis cc: cvs-all@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: cvs commit: src/sys/alpha/alpha support.s src/sys/i386/i386 swtch.s src/sys/kern kern_shutdown.c src/sys/sys systm.h X-BeenThere: cvs-all@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: CVS commit messages for the entire tree List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 04:15:30 -0000 On Tue, 20 Jan 2004, Robert Watson wrote: > On Tue, 20 Jan 2004, Don Lewis wrote: > > > It would be extremely helpful to preserve the panic message and > > (optionally) the backtrace across the reboot. Crash dumps may not > > always be possible for any number of reasons (swap smaller than RAM, > > /var/crash too small or overflowing with previous crash dumps, crash > > dump takes too long ...). This is especially true in cases where the > > machine crashes and reboots unattended. > > Actually, I was having a very similar conversation with Bill Paul this > afternoon. We were discussing dropping a copy of the kernel message > buffer onto the header of swap space on panic, if possible, and then > dropping them in /var/log/crash.log for management by newsyslog. Then the > natural response to "My machine spontaneously reboots" becomes "Look for > something recent in /var/log/crash.log", as opposed to "You'll need to > enable crash dumps, set up a serial console", etc. It's also something we > could turn on by default, as opposed to crash dumps, which would otherwise > consume of alot of disk space. Excellent idea. That along with the backtrace() output would be very much appreciated. -Nate