Kdump on Fedora - has it been superseded ?

[David Timms]

Benjamin Lewis wrote:
> On Wednesday 02 January 2008 04:21:00 am David Timms wrote:
>> Mohammed Omar wrote:
>>> Does Fedora supports kdump ? (especially F8)
>> http://www.google.com.au/search?q=fedora+8+kdump
>>
>> http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/f8/iso/en_US/sn-Kernel.html#sn-
>> Kernel-Flavors http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/FAQ_105_9036.shtm
>>
>>  From the release notes, it seems like it should be available, however,
>> I don't see any separate kernel-kdump kernels since FC6, with the latest
>> being:
>> http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/updates/6/i386/
>>    kernel-kdump-2.6.20-1.2962.fc6.i686.rpm   25-Jun-2007
>>
>> Following the kernel spec:
>> http://cvs.fedoraproject.org/viewcvs/rpms/kernel/F-7/kernel-2.6.spec?rev=1.
>> 3405&view=log
>>
>> shows:
>>
>> For F8:
>> ===
>> Revision 1.78  - (view) (download) (annotate) - [select for diffs]
>> Fri Aug 10 06:32:43 2007 UTC (4 months, 3 weeks ago) by roland
>> spec fix for kdump kernel
>> ===
>>
>> For F7:
>> ===
>> Revision 1.3214  - (view) (download) (annotate) - [select for diffs]
>> Tue Jun 5 04:44:46 2007 UTC (6 months, 4 weeks ago) by davej
>> * Tue Jun 05 2007 Dave Jones <davej at redhat.com>
>> - Allow kdump to read /proc/kcore. (#241362)
>> ===
>> Revision 1.2918  - (view) (download) (annotate) - [select for diffs]
>> Sat Feb 3 17:13:17 2007 UTC (10 months, 4 weeks ago) by davej
>> remove last its of -kdump for 686
>> ===
>> Revision 1.2869  - (view) (download) (annotate) - [select for diffs]
>> Wed Dec 13 19:34:03 2006 UTC (12 months, 2 weeks ago) by davej
>> kill off -kdump for 686/x86-64
>> ===
>>
>> It seems the capability was disabled during F7 and is no longer supported ?
> 
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the default kernel now supported kdump, 
> except on one of the PPC architectures (may be PPC64).
> 
>> If this is correct - the release notes {live} need an update, along with
>> the howto at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FC6KdumpKexecHowTo
You may be quite correct, and wes replied the same on the f-test list.

If that is the case- how do we go about actually using it ?
ie following along with the FC6KdumpKexecHowTo {where possible}:
# yum install kexec-tools crash
# yum --enablerepo=\*debuginfo install kernel-debuginfo
- add the parameters to grub as suggested.
- manually service kdump start or restart the machine since the service 
defaults to start.
- cause a crash with the cat /proc command.
Result I got was  mouse stopped working, with some colour changes in the 
clock and my desktop background image. After 4 minutes, tried a heap of 
keys like ctrl-alt-f1 etc, ctrl-alt-backspace, alt-tab etc.
Numlock still operational {ie led toggles}.
Pressing ctrl-alt-delete did initiate a reboot.

Checking in /var/crash/ showed no files.

David Timms.