Alternatives to serial console for capturing oopses

[Eric Sandeen]

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.

anyway, how about kexec/kdump/crash?  Maybe with a little sysrq-C thrown
in if it's not actually panicing?

-Eric