Date: Fri, 05 Sep 2014 16:37:43 -0500 From: Larry Rosenman <ler@lerctr.org> To: John Baldwin <jhb@freebsd.org> Cc: Craig Rodrigues <rodrigc@freebsd.org>, freebsd-current@freebsd.org, Brooks Davis <brooks@freebsd.org>, Peter Wemm <peter@wemm.org>, owner-freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: =?UTF-8?Q?ddb=5Fenable=3D=22YES=22=20by=20default=3F?= Message-ID: <9f73359eec9d0fa7cd7f872616586ea6@thebighonker.lerctr.org> In-Reply-To: <201409051735.49577.jhb@freebsd.org> References: <CAG=rPVfo5-d3rLsgUwAGvvWYiW-0wNbcstfowiJVfBTioB7fQg@mail.gmail.com> <CAG=rPVd_ATBK3DC2vk6v57vH9yrLG%2BZZ5v57D-k9XAmwBc8stQ@mail.gmail.com> <1690616.oBzWaFvmny@overcee.wemm.org> <201409051735.49577.jhb@freebsd.org>
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On 2014-09-05 16:35, John Baldwin wrote: > On Friday, September 05, 2014 5:08:07 pm Peter Wemm wrote: >> On Friday 05 September 2014 13:51:24 Craig Rodrigues wrote: >> > On Fri, Sep 5, 2014 at 7:54 AM, John Baldwin <jhb@freebsd.org> wrote: >> > > Probably at least 50% of the time when I work with a user on a bug report, >> > > I ask them to go into kgdb and run specific commands to extract more >> > > detailed info (print some struct, etc.). >> > >> > Sure, I understand, but you are not working with every user who >> > encounters a kernel panic in FreeBSD. For the average or casual >> > FreeBSD user, such as desktop >> > users of FreeBSD or PC-BSD, wouldn't it be better >> > to have ddb_enable="YES" be the default in FreeBSD? The ddb script >> > there does a fairly reasonable >> > job of gathering some useful info which can be analyzed later, and >> > then rebooting the box. >> > >> > For more expert users, or people developing products, they can set >> > ddb_enable="NO" >> > and do more advanced debugging. Or hook into /etc/rc.d/ddb and define >> > a different >> > ddb script which doesn't do textdumps on kernel panic. >> >> I think what John was saying was at that point it's too late. The >> loss of the >> crash dump means the one shot at getting more information is gone. >> >> For reproducable crashes, yes, an end user could just flip the bit. >> But for a >> one-off, it's too late. > > Also, crashinfo is already enabled by default. If a user enables crash > dumps > in the installer, they will have a nice /var/crash/core.txt.N that they > can > post to the mailing lists just as easily as the text dump you envision. > And in > fact, I've seen our users already doing this. (Have you looked at a > /var/crash/core.txt.N file yet?) I've in fact done just that (posted the top part of a core.txt.N file, and gotten VERY good results from the list(s)..... -- Larry Rosenman http://www.lerctr.org/~ler Phone: +1 214-642-9640 (c) E-Mail: ler@lerctr.org US Mail: 108 Turvey Cove, Hutto, TX 78634-5688
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