Kdump doesn't create dump for NMI releated kernel crashes

Mani mani2885 at gmail.com
Tue Aug 18 05:24:25 UTC 2009


Hello,
I am debugging the madwifi wireless driver for which I installed the
Kdump/Kexec utility. The dump (vmcore) is created for kernel panics which
occur due to the driver (The driver code has assert() functions which call
BUG() to panic the kernel)
However sometimes when the driver module is reset or loaded, the following
error is displayed on the console ( also in /var/log/messages) after which
the machine goes for a freeze.

Aug 16 11:52:37 localhost kernel: Uhhuh. NMI received for unknown reason b0
on CPU 0.
Aug 16 11:52:37 localhost kernel: You have some hardware problem, likely on
the PCI bus.
Aug 16 11:52:37 localhost kernel: Dazed and confused, but trying to continue

In this case, the machine doesn't boot into the secondary kernel (crash
kernel) to create the dump - It just stays in the freeze state. Why so? How
can I debug such scenarios where Kdump fails.

I am using Linux vanilla kernel 2.6.25.14 on fedora 9. Both main and
secondary kernel have this version of kernel.
I am pretty new to kernel debugging, please advice me how I can avoid or
debug this kernel oops.
Thanks.

-- 
Regards,
Mani
Student
NC State University
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listman.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/attachments/20090818/62d8725d/attachment-0001.htm>


More information about the fedora-list mailing list