From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Nov 15 11:04:29 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EA39F16A4CE for ; Mon, 15 Nov 2004 11:04:29 +0000 (GMT) Received: from hosea.tallye.com (joel.tallye.com [216.99.199.78]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C6F7843D49 for ; Mon, 15 Nov 2004 11:04:28 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from lorenl@alzatex.com) Received: from hosea.tallye.com (hosea.tallye.com [127.0.0.1]) by hosea.tallye.com (8.12.8/8.12.10) with ESMTP id iAFB4RYs010025 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO) for ; Mon, 15 Nov 2004 03:04:28 -0800 Received: (from sttng359@localhost) by hosea.tallye.com (8.12.8/8.12.10/Submit) id iAFB4R1c010023 for freebsd-questions@freebsd.org; Mon, 15 Nov 2004 03:04:27 -0800 X-Authentication-Warning: hosea.tallye.com: sttng359 set sender to lorenl@alzatex.com using -f Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2004 03:04:27 -0800 From: "Loren M. Lang" To: FreeBSD Mailing list Message-ID: <20041115110427.GA9768@alzatex.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.1i X-GPG-Key: ftp://ftp.tallye.com/pub/lorenl_pubkey.asc X-GPG-Fingerprint: B3B9 D669 69C9 09EC 1BCD 835A FAF3 7A46 E4A3 280C Subject: Using Swap partition for Core dump X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2004 11:04:30 -0000 I have a freebsd 5.3 system that ocassionally panics on shutdown so I thought it might be good to get a core dump of it. Since I don't have a partition decidated for that, I thought I might be able to use my swap partition for it since it's twice the size of my ram and that it's useless by the time the system panics anyways. I'm assuming that freebsd doesn't touch it's core dump partition until it needs to core dump. Looking through the system startup scripts I discovered that the system runs a program called savecore that save a core dump to a file in /var/crash from a previous crash. The problem is that this is run after swap has been turned on. Since FreeBSD doesn't seem to have a program to format the swap partition like mkswap in Linux, I'd expect that FreeBSD will just enable that partition as swap without reconizing that there is a core dump there. If this is true, then is there any easy way to save the core dump automatically, like moving savecore earlier in the startup, or would I just have to boot into single user mode and try and save the dump manually everytime? --=20 I sense much NT in you. NT leads to Bluescreen. Bluescreen leads to downtime. Downtime leads to suffering. NT is the path to the darkside. Powerful Unix is. Public Key: ftp://ftp.tallye.com/pub/lorenl_pubkey.asc Fingerprint: B3B9 D669 69C9 09EC 1BCD 835A FAF3 7A46 E4A3 280C =20