From owner-freebsd-questions Sun Dec 6 13:27:51 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id NAA06469 for freebsd-questions-outgoing; Sun, 6 Dec 1998 13:27:51 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from scientia.demon.co.uk (scientia.demon.co.uk [212.228.14.13]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id NAA06462 for ; Sun, 6 Dec 1998 13:27:48 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from ben@scientia.demon.co.uk) Received: from ben by scientia.demon.co.uk with local (Exim 2.054 #11) id 0zmkGb-000Pdf-00; Sun, 6 Dec 1998 19:54:53 +0000 Date: Sun, 6 Dec 1998 19:54:53 +0000 From: Ben Smithurst To: Conrad Sabatier Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Debugging after crash/reboot -- techniques wanted Message-ID: <19981206195453.D98489@scientia.demon.co.uk> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/0.94.17i (FreeBSD/3.0-CURRENT) Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Conrad Sabatier wrote: > In other words, I'd like to know more about how others monitor/debug their > systems, what methods/techniques are commonly used, how to get critical > information logged properly, etc. Check the "dumpdev" setting in rc.conf, it specifies where kernel crash dumps should go. This _must_ be one of your swap drives, and the swap drive must be big enough to have the content of your physical memory dumped onto it. To enable it without rebooting, use dumpon(8). After that, when your machine crashes, the crash dump will be saved into /var/crash when it comes back up, along with a copy of the kernel which generated it. These can be inspected later with `gdb -k'. If this happens a lot, you should generate a debugging kernel with `config -g'. Check the handbook, section ``Debugging a Kernel Crash Dump with KGDB'' for more info on all of this. -- Ben Smithurst ben@scientia.demon.co.uk send a blank message to ben+pgp@scientia.demon.co.uk for PGP key To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message