Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 20:34:09 -0800 (PST) From: Don Lewis <truckman@FreeBSD.org> To: rwatson@FreeBSD.org 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 Message-ID: <200401210434.i0L4Y97E060593@gw.catspoiler.org> In-Reply-To: <Pine.NEB.3.96L.1040120221452.53972J-100000@fledge.watson.org>
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On 20 Jan, 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. That is pretty much what I was thinking of as well, though I thought it should be at the end. I believe that we now swapon early, before fsck, which has to happen before we mount /var ...
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