Alternatives to serial console for capturing oopses

[Dave Jones]

On Sat, Dec 13, 2008 at 12:49:34AM -0600, Eric Sandeen wrote:
 > Sam Varshavchik wrote:
 > > nodata writes:
 > > 
 > >> Am Freitag, den 12.12.2008, 17:57 -0500 schrieb Sam Varshavchik:
 > >>> I've got a quad-core dual x86_64 server that, so far, reproducably locks up 
 > >>> under every 2.6.27 kernel released for F9 so far, when I run a build cycle. 
 > >>> The last kernel that manages to survive under load is 2.6.26.6-79.fc9, so 
 > >>> I'll continue to boot it until I get a 2.6.27 kernel that doesn't croak on 
 > >>> me.
 > >>>
 > >>> Given that the hardware does not have a serial port, how else can I capture 
 > >>> an oops, if one is being generated? At least I hope that there'll be an oops 
 > >>> for me to capture.
 > >>>
 > >> Take a look at netdump.
 > > 
 > > Took a look.
 > > 
 > > 1) Only the server component is present in Fedora. There is no client. And, 
 > > of course, I need the client.
 > 
 > I haven't used netdump for a while but:
 > 
 > http://kojipkgs.fedoraproject.org/packages/netdump/0.7.16/13/x86_64/
 > 
 > for example seems to have both.  *shrug*
 > 
 > > 2) The client package requires additional kernel modules to be built. If you 
 > > are actually using netdump in Fedora, please explain how.
 > > 
 > > 3) netdump only supports a small set of NICs. netdump does not support my 
 > > NIC.

Umm, wasn't that the stuff we shipped in RHEL4 that never made it upstream ?
Or has this been reworked to work with kdump?

If the former, it isn't going to work ever due to the lack of drivers
in the kernel, and should be removed from Fedora.

	Dave

-- 
http://www.codemonkey.org.uk