From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Mar 26 21:11:07 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C56AB106568C for ; Thu, 26 Mar 2009 21:11:07 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from rwatson@FreeBSD.org) Received: from cyrus.watson.org (cyrus.watson.org [65.122.17.42]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A02C08FC27 for ; Thu, 26 Mar 2009 21:11:07 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from rwatson@FreeBSD.org) Received: from fledge.watson.org (fledge.watson.org [65.122.17.41]) by cyrus.watson.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 4990346B45; Thu, 26 Mar 2009 17:11:07 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 26 Mar 2009 21:11:07 +0000 (GMT) From: Robert Watson X-X-Sender: robert@fledge.watson.org To: Barney Cordoba In-Reply-To: <715876.11941.qm@web63902.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: References: <715876.11941.qm@web63902.mail.re1.yahoo.com> User-Agent: Alpine 2.00 (BSF 1167 2008-08-23) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Cc: current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Alternative to crashdump? X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 26 Mar 2009 21:11:09 -0000 On Thu, 26 Mar 2009, Barney Cordoba wrote: > I have a 7.0 server which crashes every now and then and it always seems to > happen when its unattended. Also, crashdump doesn't work reliably on the MB, > so thats not an option either without a lot of work I don't have time for. > > Is there a way to get ddb to save the crash trace and then reboot? I just > really need to crashpoint and get the trace. Even just the crash point would > be very useful. I can't have it drop into the keyboard for half the night, > or to reboot and lose the info. DDB does support dumping only DDB output to disk, which might be more reliable a that writes less data, but I believe that was introduced in 7.1 (textudmp(4)). However, if it's simply a case of the disk controller not working in your crash environment, perhaps because it's involved in the crash, then the usual solution is to attach a serial console via another box and log output. You can use either KDB_UNATTENDED with KDB_TRACE to generate a trace automatically on panic and reboot , or you can use the ddb script environment (also 7.1, I think?) to run sets of DDB commands and automatically reboot. Robert N M Watson Computer Laboratory University of Cambridge