Capture OOPS

[Justin W]

Gilboa Davara wrote:
> On Mon, 2007-04-23 at 10:54 +0300, Gilboa Davara wrote:
>   
>> On Sun, 2007-04-22 at 11:12 -0600, Ashley M. Kirchner wrote:
>>     
>>>     Seems I've asked this before, but I'll be darned if I can find the 
>>> answer somewhere in my archives.  I need to capture a kernel OOPS 
>>> somehow.  I've got a server that seems to be trigger happy and locking 
>>> up/crashing once every 24 hours or so.  The unfortunate thing is that 
>>> I'm not there when it happens to look on the monitor and see if I can 
>>> discern  anything from there (usually one of the other guys come in 
>>> before me and they simply hit the reset button because they don't 
>>> understand the gibberish on screen anyway.)  So, I need to figure out a 
>>> way to capture that OOPS.  Since it's not send to syslog, I can't send 
>>> it to another machine for logging.  What other methods are there of 
>>> doing this?  This machine doesn't have a serial link that I can link up 
>>> to another either.  So, anyone?
>>>
>>> -
>>>       
>> Simple.
>> - Connect the machine to another machine using a NULL serial console.
>> - Add the following parameters to your grub:
>> console=ttyS0 console=ttyS0,57600n8
>> (Where ttyS0 is serial0, 57600 is speed and n8 is 8 bits, no parity)
>> - Run cu [1, uucp] or minicom and log all the output.
>>
>> - Gilboa
>>     
>
> Ooops.
> Just noticed that you don't have serial port. (Down the thread.)
> Sorry...
>
> What about a USB-serial dongle?
>
> - Gilboa
>
>   

What about something like this:
http://fedoranews.org/mediawiki/index.php/Using_Kexec_and_Kdump_in_Rawhide

I think it may do what you need. I've never actually done this before, 
but quite a while ago I read an article about it, and if memory serves 
me, this should be able to give you some information about the kernel 
oops without needing a serial console or to buy a usb serial dongle.

Justin W