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Date: Thu, 13 Nov 1997 09:54:29 -0800 (PST)
From: Doug White <dwhite@gdi.uoregon.edu>
Reply-To: Doug White <dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu>
To: Jason Wells <jcwells@u.washington.edu>
cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: dump succeeded / savecore: no dump
In-Reply-To: <3.0.3.32.19971112051546.007c2dd0@jcwells.deskmail.washington.edu>
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On Wed, 12 Nov 1997, Jason Wells wrote:

> I have been having trouble with umount and panic:page faults. In an effort
> to hunt down my enemy I have ventured for the first time into the field
> where core dumps frolic. I have been unsuccesful at catching one of these
> little beasties.

You aren't using umount -f are you?  I've had problems dismounting FSs
that people are in and then they access something in the disappeared
partition which causes a panic.  (Of course if you use -f you get what you
pay for.)

> Upon receiving the panic:page fault I recieve the following at the console.
> 
> dumping to dev 30001 offset 117776
> dump 47 46 45 .... 3 2 1 succeeded
> 
> "Great!" I thought to myself. I have snared the wily dump.
> 
> During the boot sequence I read the message...
> 
> savecore: reboot after panic: page fault
> savecore: no dump, not enough free space on device
> 
> BUT swapinfo tells me...
> 			1K Blocks	Used	Avail		Capacity	Type
> /dev/wd0s2b 	108040	0	107976	0%		interleaved

BUT what does df report?  There has to be enough space on the target FS to
restore the dump, which is RAM+swap.  by default the core is dropped into
/var/crash, if you don't have enough space there the savecore will fail. 
In that case run savecore yourself: 

savecore /dir/with/lots/of/space/

See the savecore(8) man page for details.

> P.S. Do people appreciate the attempt to mix humor with technical
> discussion?

No comment. :-)

Doug White                              | University of Oregon  
Internet:  dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu    | Residence Networking Assistant
http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~dwhite    | Computer Science Major