crash dump from kernel on 4GB machine too big to debug?

Nataraj incoming-fedora-list at rjl.com
Thu Aug 14 02:15:07 UTC 2008


I'm trying to solve a crashing problem on a CentOS 5.2 system (already
tried posting this to CentOS list).

For several reasons I'm trying to debug using stock kernels from the
repository.  At first I captured a dump of kernel-PAE-2.6.18-92.1.6.el5
which I was able to examine using the following command:

crash /boot/System.map-2.6.18-92.1.6.el5PAE /usr/lib/debug/lib/modules/2.6.18-92.1.6.el5PAE/vmlinux ./vmcore

I then installed the package kernel-debug-2.6.18-92.1.6.el5 and rebooted
with that (there is no PAE debugging kernels in the repository).  I
reproduced my crash and collected a crash dump, however when I try to
examine the dump I get the following error:

crash /boot/System.map-2.6.18-92.1.6.el5debug /usr/lib/debug/lib/modules/2.6.18-92.1.6.el5/vmlinux ./vmcore

crash: v2 module syment space malloc (2005518689 symbols): Cannot
allocate memory

I have used ulimit in the shell to set all of the limits to unlimited
and I still continue to have this problems.  Any ideas?  Is it possible
that this kernel crash with debugging symbols is just too big to debug
due to the 4GB address limititation?

I have the following kernel-debuginfo packages installed:
        kernel-debuginfo-common-2.6.18-92.1.6.el5       
        kernel-PAE-debuginfo-2.6.18-92.1.6.el5
        kernel-debuginfo-2.6.18-92.1.6.el5


I am running CentOS 5.2 on a dual Xeon Server with 4gb of memory.

Thanks,
Nataraj




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