The 2.0 version of the Linux Kernel Crash Dumps (LKCD) project is now
available -- this version applies to 2.3.99-pre9 kernels, and includes
some of Stephen Tweedie's patches for kiobufs (since we need them).
LKCD provides systems with the ability to save a system crash dump when
the kernel has a panic or exception, and saves the memory to your swap
space, recovering it on reboot, and creating a crash dump report which
can be sent to support personnel (or groups like 'lkml', if necessary).
Feel free to download our current patch from:
http://oss.sgi.com/projects/lkcd/download/2.0
You can also look at and contribute to the source project on SourceForge.
The project's CVS location is at:
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/?cvsroot=lkcd
And as always, information about LKCD, including news, an FAQ, etc.,
can be found at:
http://oss.sgi.com/projects/lkcd/
A few points to note:
- The x86 version works great, but we're still working on the Alpha and
IA-64 ports. They're coming along, however ... keep reading the LKCD
News page for updates. Thanks to Brian Hall for his help with the
Alpha port.
- While you can build the vmdump code as a *module*, and it works, for now
just build the vmdump code directly into the kernel -- the reason is
because we still have to build the ability to perform stack traces when
the code goes through a module. (And that will take some time to
complete, as it's kind of ugly to do ...)
- We are no longer limited to SCSI devices, like we were with the 2.2
kernel version. We're going to try to backport the 2.3 changes into
2.2, so we have a universal version.
If you have any other questions, please send me an E-mail, or review
the FAQ on the oss.sgi.com web site. Thanks.
--Matt