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Silicon Graphics

SGI announces Linux Kernel Crash Dumps (LKCD) 206

Alphix writes "SGI has announced their Linux Kernel Crash Dumps project - and it's gone to release. It's intended to simplify the examination of system crashes thru saving the kernel memory image when the system dies due to a software failure, recovering the kernel memory image when the system is rebooted and then examining the memory image to determine what happened when the failure occurred."
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SGI announces Linux Kernel Crash Dumps (LKCD)

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  • > And also, it's one of the things I really, really, really HATE about NT. No debugger comes with the OS, and there's no free, distributable one out there, so from a tech support standpoint, if your customer's server barfs, you kind of have to guess at what went wrong, or establish a pattern from multiple calls, or try to reproduce it in-house.

    Yeah it sucks. The only solution that I'm aware of is to get your customer(s) to install MS Dev Studio, or even NuMega's SoftIce. Not very practical, but its better then nothing.

    Cheers
  • I think you misunderstood him. Solaris (I assume) has the ability to dump core *for the kernel*. Obviously, not into the filesystem - thus the swap/savecore dance.

    And no, it's not only for applications. And it's *very* useful.
  • Crucify me for saying this, but I have identical results with NT as both a workstation and a server... Your mileage may vary.
  • As you note, this is far more than a mere Kernel core dumper. I know this site attracts many professional developers and sysadmins, but there are far more who have never had the pleasure of driving IRIX. Linux is really good, given it's maturity level, and I use it at work and home - I develop for it at work for our products : see Ariel Corporation ISP products [ariel.com], but IRIX has a some real jewels, and SGI has chosen to give the technology to the open source world. The first was XFS ( imo the best filesystem ever invented )plus some other assorted stuff that SGI is paying it's programming staff to give to us, and now the technology to pinpoint the exact cause of a kernel crash. The IRIX kernel crash postmortem technology is far beyond a mere core dump and pointer - it tries it's best to identify the offending system call, and pid if it can. This release appears to be a port of that technology to Linux.
    Stop whining folks - we have just been given one of the best debugging tools ( especially for kernel hackers and device driver writers!! ) in existence as a gift. Try using it, and be sure to thank SGI. After all, even though they have market reasons to do this, they still *did* it.

  • by dmercer ( 111079 ) on Friday November 05, 1999 @01:56PM (#1559246)
    From some of the posts above, I gather that there is some confusion about the significance of the functionality being provided by SGI with LKCD.

    Yes, every reasonable operating system can be configured to save the core files resultant from a kernel panic to swap, and yes, many provide excellent tools for conducting a post-mortem analysis of the image to diagnose what caused it to croak. But in the past, with the notable exception of IRIX, this process required a fairly intimate knowledge of the operating system and even the underlying hardware, and was considered something of a black art. An excellent book on core dump analysis issues/procedures is 'PANIC!' Unix System Crash Dump Analysis, published by Sunsoft. IRIX, and now Linux when properly configured, automatically conducts the crash dump analysis upon re-entering multi-user, saving a legible and comprehensible report detailing what was going on at the time of the crash and providing a suggestion as to the cause.

    This facility can be an excellent way of quickly tracking down the cause of the panic, or at least determining if the problem lay in hardware or software. Below are three examples of some recent reports generated at our site:

    Sample 1 [nasa.gov]

    Sample 2 [nasa.gov]

    Sample 3 [nasa.gov]

    While this utility is no replacement for an experienced sysadmin and a debugger when it comes to deciphering the cause of failure in complex systems (especially SMP), it will likely be a boon to the hundreds of thousands of Linux admins supporting small workgroup servers and workstations. And yes, Linux is stable.. but c'mon: kernels panic.

  • That guy has no clue, its obvious.
    He runs a default RedHat install, with everything enabled and still running the same kernel that came with it, he has no SCSI devices, or a clue to even know what SCSI is, his largest partition is probably a 15GB Windows98SE partition, and he boots linux to winnuke his non-elite irc friends.

    Come on, "Stopping md devices..."? Does he actually use md features? I seriously doubt it. Its just that default RootHat install pushed it down his throat. And apmd? It's kind of pointless on a AC powered system. And it's really pointless to run RedHat on a laptop since even the "Laptop" installation still installs updated whichi will spin your hdd every 5 seconds and make your battery last less than it does in Win95.

    I fucking hate ignorant people that Redhat and similar idiotic distributions bring to the world.
  • by CraigMcPherson ( 52487 ) on Friday November 05, 1999 @02:39PM (#1559254) Journal
    You should have considered placing it under a BSD-style license. Microsoft's feelings are going to be hurt over the fact that they can't incorporate it into Windows 2000.
  • One of the things I remember back from my days when I was tinkering with SunOS 3.4 and Ultrix and IBM's AOS (not AIX) was that many BSDish Unixes would write what were basically kernel "core dumps" to the swap partition when they died (I may be getting details wrong -- might not have been swap file, might not have been all those OSes, etc.). Sophisticated gurus could then fix things. (Back in those days I was not enough of a guru to do this myself, but I lived and worked with people who were.)

    I think it's *wonderful* that a facility like this is coming to Linux. It makes me much more enthusiastic about taking on kernel hacking myself.

    But out of fairness I do have to ask... don't the BSDoid operating systems already have this?

    And it's a little embarassing to point out that NT has something like this as well.
  • What happens when the LKCDA crashes during a system crash? Who recovers from that??

    Nobody. A crash dumper is going to be a minimal, always-resident program designed to simply copy physical memory to disk. If that can't be done, the system is either fried at the hardware level, or is so far corrupted that a core dump wouldn't mean much anyway.
  • I have been thinking about a solution to kernel panics and no-reboot kernel upgrades for a while, and here is the only thing I have come up with that seems viable:

    We have redundant power supplies, hard drives, and many other pieces of hardware. I am thinking it may be good for developpers, at any rate, to use redundant kernels. Kernel 1 dies, kernel 2 realises this and kills kernel 1 and takes over the system. Interrupt in service: a few clock cycles. Perhaps a new runlevel should be implemented into the linux kernel...runlevel 7, which would be against the POSIX standard I think, not sure, but would allow a condition in which the kernel is replacing itself in memory, by having a redundant kernel take over while one is being replaced in memory, and the second kernel handing off resources to the new primary kernel when it is ready, returning to the previous runlevel.

    The long and the short of what I am saying is that there should be a second kernel in memory at all times ready to take over at any time, but programmed to not run until the first kernel dies or is being upgraded.

    The disadvantage: it starts to consume extra memory resources, and process table entries, and will take a long time to perfect.

    What do you think?
  • This is not a core dump of a running application, but rather, a core dump of the entire running system. If a kernel failure occurs, this patch will dump the contents of system to memory to disk, allowing you to analyize system state from just before when the crash occured.

    This would be very useful, for example, when debugging a device driver. It is not something the end-user, or even system administrator, is likely to use. It is for the kernel developer.

    Other OSes (Sun Solaris, SGI IRIX, Novell Netware, to name a few) have had this capability, but Linux has not. Linux has traditionally dumped a summary of the kernel state to the screen, but that is (1) tedious to copy down by hand (which you have to, since the system is dead), and (2) not as complete as an entire system image is.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    WinDbg, while probably not redistributable, is a free download from MS. It can read NT kernel dumps. Try here [microsoft.com] or here [microsoft.com]. Unfortunately, they're already orienting these places to Win2k.
  • IRIX machines have been doing this for quite a while....

    IRIX isn't Sun's UNIX, it's SGI's UNIX. They're unlikely to sue themselves for stealing an idea from IRIX....

    BSD, as others have noted, has had it for ages; many other flavors of UNIX probably got the idea (and, in some if not all cases, the code) from BSD.

  • Yes, NT has a "Write debugging information to: (generally %SystemRoot%\MEMORY.DMP) option. Then you have a copy of your last-state memory in this massive file. This is not news

    What jafac was saying is that Microsoft does not give you or offer any low-cost, distributable tools for making sense out of this massive pile of arcane charachters.

    Got 128 MB of system memory on a NT workstation? 512 MB on a server? Hope you've got Einstein and a couple years to sort through the thing by hand to find your problem!!

    And UnknownSoldier has another very good point: The analysis tools are not cheap, and you can't share!

    C'mon Microsoft, didn't you learn anything in kindergarden?

  • One of the nice things I remember going back to my NCR tower days was the ability to take a core dump even when the system hadn't paniced.

    On the NCR tower this was done by toggling a switch to get into the boot ROM, then choosing appropriate options, then the memory would be written to the dump device.

    This helped us diagnose many strange crashes where the system wasn't functioning correctly, but it hadn't actualy paniced, for example, one system had init die, which made logging in a bit hard, but the kernel was still running.

    I've missed this feature on more recent PCish hardware, as they don't really have a boot ROM.

    Perhaps someone would like to make a more Linux biased BIOS, which could include these sort of nice features.

  • I don't think so.
    As far as I know, OS/2 has had this for years now.
    While it will tell you to write down the information which it dumps to screen (stupid!), it actually also saves a copy to disk.

    The only time I've had the pleasure of this experience was when I fried my mobo...
  • I hope SGI would be smart enough to do this "clean room." If not, SCO (not Sun, not HP, not IBM, not Compaq, not GNU, not AT&T, not Novell) could sue them. SCO owns the UNIX source code.

    Let me know (of course you will) if I'm wrong on this.


  • Kernel Panic: Linux Kernel Crash Dump Subsystem received signal 11. giving up.
  • by Yebyen ( 59663 )
    Sounds like a good idea... although windows could use this more, lol. But seriously, i have noticed some problems when it freezes (yes it has happened to me, but rarely) i have no idea why. [coughnetscape].

    If we fail, we will lose the war.
    Had to do it lol

  • I talked to Stephen at the Expo in London and
    is not his intention to push this into 2.3. So
    unless he (and Linus) changes his mind, it won't
    be going into 2.3.
  • The description says that it saves the dump to a SCSI partition. What happens if you're running IDE?

    I think the idea is pretty cool -- no more trying to figure out why ksymoops didn't grok what you hastily scribbled down. I suppose all the hardcore kernel hackers will cry "Sacrilege!" though.



    P.S. Sun won't sue for stealing their crash dump idea, right? ;-)
  • Another comment - I know that reiserfs is being submitted for 2.3, but nobody knows whether Linus decides that it goes in at this time. It would be very nice to have for 2.4, though.

    And 2.3 is not as simple as you think - although it is "just" ext2 with a journal, you have to consider stuff write ordering, for instance.
  • Forgive my ignorance, but I'm not to educated on the "under the hood" stuff in *nix environments, but is this a new thing? I've noticed that under Solaris that I've got core files after a crash. Are these the same type of thing or do they not apply to the kernal? If not what are core files for? Do they have any use beyond cluttering up directories?
  • This is good... lets you see just what went wrong when the server went down for the first time in 2 years. Should make for finding the bad programs that do bring linux down.
  • > If we fail, we will lose the war.
    > Had to do it lol

    What's that from?

    --
    Max V.
  • Well, chances are this article does has nothing to do with your every-day user. I tried booting 2.3.x once, and it was a no-go. (scsi driver failed).

    as for redundant.. well, at the time I posted, it wasn't redundant. ;-)

    and.. NO, I don't sit there waiting for first post.. It just happened to be that way when I checked. I saw an article about kernel panics.. and I thought.. "Well, my kernel has _never_ panicked, this is pretty useless!"

    As I was typing, though.. I figured it would be a great help to kernel hackers.
  • Having worked in a Solaris shop, you can see the value of having crash dumps to send to your vendor.

    Actually, we were the vendor and got crash dumps from customers that was able to pinpoint very quickly what the problem was. Once that was found, it was easy to fix. Without the crash dumps, it could take weeks to find the cause of a nasty bug. Especially intermittent ones.

    With Linux having this feature, it'll be easier for driver authors to debug their code, and most likely boost the confidence of customers who want 99.999% uptime.
  • Then you get a "double panic", a very cryptic message, and no crash dump. Very rare, but it can happen.

    At least, that's how *BSD handles it. "double panic" is engineereese for "fix your broken hardware".
  • ive my ignorance, but I'm not to educated on the "under the hood" stuff in *nix environments, but is this a new thing?

    It's decades old, in fact. When I was debugging patches to DOS/360 and OS/360 (for IBM mainframes) and MCP (for Burroughs mainframes) a core dump, directed to the high-speed printer, was an invaluable tool.

    Once RAM sizes passed the megabyte mark, the effectiveness was much reduced; it was just too much paper to page through. There was enough hardware information (3 extra tag bits for each 48-bit word) to allow the MCP core dump to be formatted into data, code, and stack areas. The IBM dumps were tough going to decode. On a modern microcomputer, of course, lots of other things like page tables and registers have to printed out, too...

  • Not really. What you're describing could be modelled as two virtual machines, each running Linux and High Availability software. If one kernel dies, the processes migrate to the second virtual machine.

    This -could- be done with only minimal enhancements to Linux and the existing HA software - the support of two (or more) virtual machines within one (or more) physical machines.

    Actually, this would go beyond crash recovery, as you could use this to do better scaling of multi-processor/multi-machine environments. Instead of trying to map N processes onto M components, you're only mapping N processes onto N virtual machines, and then N virtual machines onto M components. Because you already know and understand virtual machines, that's a much easier problem to solve.

  • Has anyone said it was a new thing. Linux just lacked a kernel debugger and now it has one. Linux still lacks a journaled file system, and will eventually have one. Nobody's saying it's new, but it's still a reason to be happy for.
  • BSDI has done this for some time. It's actually really handy when you're messing with stuff. Now if it also supported kgdb, that would be even cooler.
  • I don't normally have problems with crashes either. Currently, however, I am working on kernel modules for solaris. Until I learned how to use adb on the kernel crash dump, debugging was impossible. Now it is relatively easy, just use adb -k unix.0 vmcore.0 and $c will show you the call stack. This works great for debugging kernel level drivers and modules. I can't wait to try this under linux!
    --
    Mike Mangino Consultant, Analysts International
  • You might have redundant kernels of the same version, as long as you do not plan to use this for upgrading to newer kernels.

    Data structures regularly change even in the stable kernels and providing an upgrade path for this would clutter the kernel to an extent that I do not believe Linus would accept.

    --
  • BSD/OS has had a similar feature. *completely* automatic? No.

    cd /var/crash
    /sys/scripts/kanal 0

    And you get a file called 'info.0' which is a nice summary of everything important to ftp up to BSDI's support group.

  • Hey AC, why don't you get your facts right ?

    1 - the SGi hardware is amazing. They make some of the finest machines available ( Octane 2000, O2 ), and they achieve a level of parallelism that Linux still dreams about ( in an allways undervalued Irix machine )

    2 - their contributions to Linux have been very good and well received. KDBG is a very useful tool, and coupled with LKCD will make kernel and driver development a lot easier. GLX iwill be used in XFree86 4.0, they're working in the Linux for Merced port, etc.

    3 - OS scalability: have you ever heard of IRIX and its support of more than 64 CPUs ?

    4 - PROVEN fact that Linux never crashes is bullshit. It's just an OS like any other that can also crash, in partiuclar during development releases. I'm doing multiprocessor research on it and today I made it crash twice. I like Linux very much, but I try to keep my eyes open.

    Finally, what have you done for Linux lately ? SGI has been supporting Linux constantly during this last year, and they don't deserve to be treated this way ( remember, there're people hard working there that contributes their code under the GPL )

    Enough, you don't even deserve my time answering your stupid post. Go back to your perl scripts ( or was it VB ? ).



  • by Anonymous Coward
    The resource kit includes tools to interpret the core dump and regurgitate the BSOD contents (which, BTW, almost always points to a video driver file). If that isn't good enough go over to www.sysinternals.com [sysinternals.com] where there is a utility that saves the screen contents specifically.

  • by Anonymous Coward
    This IRIX stuff is baloney. Sun has ISCDA which does that and more. But since you know about the PANIC book, you probably know about this simple script. Here is sample output:


    ************************************************ ******************************
    Initial System Crash Dump Analysis Output iscda Rev 1.4
    Sat Nov 6 01:02:45 EST 1999
    ************************************************ ******************************

    ************************************
    ** Initial information from adb **
    ************************************

    physmem 3de7
    utsname:
    utsname: sys SunOS
    utsname+0x101: node dogmeat.dog.meat.com
    utsname+0x202: release 5.5.1
    utsname+0x303: version Generic_103640-24
    utsname+0x404: machine sun4u
    srpc_domain:
    srpc_domain: dog.meat.com Domain name
    1999 Oct 31 01:54:41 Time of boot
    time:
    time: 1999 Nov 5 22:50:36 Time of crash

    Auditing is not enabled

    Quotas are not enabled


    ** Panic String **
    --------------------
    lm_blocks+0x37c: lm_get_sysid: cached entry not found


    ** Stack Backtrace **
    -----------------------
    complete_panic(0x9,0x301a987c,0x301a96a0,0x0,0x0 ,0x1) + 30
    do_panic(0x6058c078,0x301a987c,0x301a9ec0,0x600c 6b60,0x1043cf00,0x0) + 9c
    vcmn_err(0x3,0x6058c078,0x301a987c,0x69,0x0,0x3) + 150
    cmn_err(0x3,0x6058c078,0x301a9ec0,0x6084d0b8,0x2 c002a,0x1) + 1c
    lm_get_sysid(0x60141f58,0x6011df9c,0x6084d0d8,0x 3ffc,0x0,0x0) + 16c
    lm_nlm_reclaim(?) + e0
    lm_reclaim_lock(0x6044095c,0x6011df90,0x1040ae01 ,0x20,0x60440950,0x703)
    lm_relock_server(0x608f2910,0x6084df80,0x6058cdc 0,0x6058cdb4,0x60dea900,0x60dea900) + 1b0
    lm_recovery(0x301a9ad0,0x608592c8,0x608592bc,0x1 ,0x301a9ad0,0x0) + f0
    lm_nlm_dispatch(0x12,0x301a9c5c,0x0,0x60858378,0 x0,0x0) + 3ec
    svc_getreq(0x301a9c5c,0x60cc25a0,0x1,0x4,0x3,0x6 008e9b0) + 164
    svc_run(0x60cc25a0,0x6005be84,0x6005be7c,0x6005b e90,0x6005be8c,0x6005be44) + 3dc


    ** Per CPU information **
    ---------------------------
    ncpus:
    ncpus: 1 # of CPUs present
    ncpus_online:
    ncpus_online: 1 # of CPUs online


    cpu0+8: 1b0000 Thread address

    data address not found


    ** Stacktrace **
    -----------------
    l0 l1 l2 l3
    l4 l5 l6 l7
    i0 i1 i2 i3
    i4 i5 i6 i7

    0x301a96a0: 0 104146a8 0 0
    1 10406000 0 0
    9 301a987c 301a96a0 0
    0 1 301a9708 1001d3c8

    0x301a96a0: 0 cpu0 0 0
    1 vmhatstat+0x4d0 0 0
    SLOAD_DEBUG+1 0x301a987c 0x301a96a0 0
    0 1 0x301a9708 do_panic+0x9c


    0x301a9708: 104146a8 0 0 6001ddc0
    610aa3c8 2 1 1
    6058c078 301a987c 301a9ec0 600c6b60
    1043cf00 0 301a9768 100597f0

    0x301a9708: cpu0 0 0 0x6001ddc0
    0x610aa3c8 2 1 1
    lm_blocks+0x37c 0x301a987c 0x301a9ec0 spec_lostpage+0xc04
    strreflock 0 0x301a9768 vcmn_err+0x150


    0x301a9768: 9968c8d0 0 0 6c
    6c 6c 60581c40 2
    3 6058c078 301a987c 69
    0 3 301a97d0 10059690

    0x301a9768: 0x9968c8d0 0 0 PGSHIFT_DEBUG+0x5f
    PGSHIFT_DEBUG+0x5f PGSHIFT_DEBUG+0x5f
    acl_timer_type_v3+0xba1 2 3
    lm_blocks+0x37c 0x301a987c PGSHIFT_DEBUG+0x5c
    0 3 0x301a97d0 cmn_err+0x1c


    0x301a97d0: 10409d88 0 6068bbc0 0
    0 10409eb4 10409eb4 0
    3 6058c078 301a9ec0 6084d0b8
    2c002a 1 301a9830 60586d80

    0x301a97d0: mutex_ops 0 0x6068bbc0 0
    0 rwlock_ops rwlock_ops 0
    3 lm_blocks+0x37c 0x301a9ec0 0x6084d0b8
    0x2c002a 1 0x301a9830 lm_get_sysid+0x16c


    0x301a9830: 1 0 1 0
    3fff 0 60599e68 6084d080
    60141f58 6011df9c 6084d0d8 3ffc
    0 0 301a98a0 6085620c

    0x301a9830: 1 0 1 0
    PGSHIFT_DEBUG+0x3ff2 0 lm_sysids_lock
    0x6084d080 rootnex_ops+0x2438 0x6011df9c
    0x6084d0d8 PGSHIFT_DEBUG+0x3fef 0
    0 0x301a98a0 lm_nlm_reclaim+0xe0


    0x301a98a0: 1 606a4160 704 60b1b434
    4 301a9910 2 1
    6044095c 6011df90 1040ae01 20
    60440950 703 301a9958 6058b2c0

    0x301a98a0: 1 ltable+0x2d4 PGSHIFT_DEBUG+0x6f7
    0x60b1b434 PR_SIZE 0x301a9910 2
    1 0x6044095c 0x6011df90 utsname+0x101
    PGSHIFT_DEBUG+0x13 0x60440950 PGSHIFT_DEBUG+0x6f6
    0x301a9958 lm_relock_server+0x1b0

    0x301a9958: 6058cc00 6058cc00 6058cd94 6058cd88
    6058cd68 6058cd5c 1 4000
    608f2910 6084df80 6058cdc0 6058cdb4
    60dea900 60dea900 301a99c8 608558f8

    0x301a9958: lm_blocks+0xf04 lm_blocks+0xf04 lm_blocks+0x1098
    lm_blocks+0x108c lm_blocks+0x106c
    lm_blocks+0x1060 1 PGSHIFT_DEBUG+0x3ff3
    ism_off+0x39c 0x6084df80 lm_blocks+0x10c4
    lm_blocks+0x10b8 0x60dea900 0x60dea900
    0x301a99c8 lm_recovery+0xf0

    0x301a99c8: 3c0000 0 60599c00 1
    0 0 186b5 2
    301a9ad0 608592c8 608592bc 1
    301a9ad0 0 301a9a38 60855f2c

    0x301a99c8: 0x3c0000 0 0x60599c00 1
    0 0 0x186b5 2
    0x301a9ad0 block_lock_msg_disp+0xee0 block_lock_msg_disp+0xed4
    1 0x301a9ad0 0 0x301a9a38
    lm_nlm_dispatch+0x3ec

    0x301a9a38: 2d 60130c88 301a9ec0 0
    18350163 1 12 1
    12 301a9c5c 0 60858378
    0 0 301a9b08 6012adac

    0x301a9a38: PGSHIFT_DEBUG+0x20 svc_clts_op 0x301a9ec0
    0 0x18350163 1 PGSHIFT_DEBUG+5
    1 PGSHIFT_DEBUG+5 0x301a9c5c 0
    lm_nlm_disp+0x120 0 0
    0x301a9b08 svc_getreq+0x164

    0x301a9b08: 6013dda0 60169550 301a9cdc 1003d140
    ffffffff 6013ddd4 301a9c60 0
    301a9c5c 60cc25a0 1 4
    3 6008e9b0 301a9bb8 6012b274

    0x301a9b08: rqcred_lock ledmadelay+0x150 0x301a9cdc
    nfs_svc+0x140 VADDR_MASK_DEBUG svc_lock
    0x301a9c60 0 0x301a9c5c 0x60cc25a0
    1 PR_SIZE 3 scsi_log_mutex+0x4d24
    0x301a9bb8 svc_run+0x3dc

    0x301a9bb8: 6005be58 6005be74 6005be80 6005be4c
    6005be38 6005be3c 0 6005be78
    60cc25a0 6005be84 6005be7c 6005be90
    6005be8c 6005be44 301a9d20 10025470

    0x301a9bb8: pteminfo+0x2030 pteminfo+0x204c pteminfo+0x2058 pteminfo+0x2024
    pteminfo+0x2010 pteminfo+0x2014 0 pteminfo+0x2050
    0x60cc25a0 pteminfo+0x205c pteminfo+0x2054 pteminfo+0x2068
    pteminfo+0x2064 pteminfo+0x201c 0x301a9d20 thread_start+4


    0x301a9d20: 0 0 0 0
    0 0 0 0
    6005be30 0 0 0
    0 0 0 6012ae98

    0x301a9d20: 0 0 0 0
    0 0 0 0
    pteminfo+0x2008 0 0 0
    0 0 0 svc_run




    ** CPU structures **
    --------------------
    cpu0:
    cpu0: id seqid flags
    0 0 1b
    cpu0+0xc: thread idle_t pause
    301a9ec0 3002bec0 3016dec0
    cpu0+0x18: lwp callo fpowner
    0 0 0
    cpu0+0x24: next prev next on prev on
    104146a8 104146a8 104146a8 104146a8
    cpu0+0x34: lock npri queue limit actmap
    0 170 60643000 606437f8 60089218
    cpu0+0x44: maxrunpri max unb pri nrunnable
    100 100 1
    cpu0+0x50: runrun kprnrn dispthread thread lock
    1 1 301a9ec0 0
    cpu0+0x5c: intr_stack on_intr intr_thread intr_actv
    30027fa0 0 3001fec0 0
    cpu0+0x6c: base_spl
    0


    ** Msgbuf **
    ------------
    msgbuf:
    msgbuf: magic size bufx bufr
    8724786 1fe8 164b 0
    msgbuf+0x10: !Aô,0/espdma@e,8400000/esp@e,8800000/sd@1,0

    sd2 at esp0: target 2 lun 0
    sd2 is /sbus@1f,0/espdma@e,8400000/esp@e,8800000/sd@2,0

    root on /sbus@1f,0/espdma@e,8400000/esp@e,8800000/sd@0,0:a fstyp
    e ufs
    zs0 at sbus0: SBus0 slot 0xf offset 0x1100000 Onboard device spa
    rc9 ipl 12
    zs0 is /sbus@1f,0/zs@f,1100000
    zs1 at sbus0: SBus0 slot 0xf offset 0x1000000 Onboard device spa
    rc9 ipl 12
    zs1 is /sbus@1f,0/zs@f,1000000
    keyboard is major minor
    mouse is major minor
    stdin is major minor
    stdout is major minor
    boot cpu (0) initialization complete - online
    ledma0 at sbus0: SBus0 slot 0xe offset 0x8400010
    le0 at ledma0: SBus0 slot 0xe offset 0x8c00000 Onboard device sp
    arc9 ipl 6
    le0 is /sbus@1f,0/ledma@e,8400010/le@e,8c00000
    lebuffer0 at sbus0: SBus0 slot 0x1 offset 0x40000
    le1 at lebuffer0: SBus0 slot 0x1 offset 0x60000 SBus level 4 spa
    rc9 ipl 7
    le1 is /sbus@1f,0/lebuffer@1,40000/le@1,60000
    dump on /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s1 size 1024448K
    syncing file systems...cpu0: SUNW,UltraSPARC (upaid 0 impl 0x10
    ver 0x22 clock 143 MHz)
    SunOS Release 5.5.1 Version Generic_103640-24 [UNIX(R) System V
    Release 4.0]
    Copyright (c) 1983-1996, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
    mem = 131072K (0x8000000)
    avail mem = 127811584
    Ethernet address = 8:0:20:79:c1:1
    root nexus = Sun Ultra 1 SBus (UltraSPARC 143MHz)
    sbus0 at root: UPA 0x1f 0x0 ...
    espdma0 at sbus0: SBus0 slot 0xe offset 0x8400000
    dma1 at sbus0: SBus0 slot 0x1 offset 0x81000
    esp0 at espdma0: SBus0 slot 0xe offset 0x8800000 Onboard device
    sparc9 ipl 4
    esp1 at dma1: SBus0 slot 0x1 offset 0x80000 SBus level 3 sparc9
    ipl 5
    sd0 at esp0: target 0 lun 0
    sd0 is /sbus@1f,0/espdma@e,8400000/esp@e,8800000/sd@0,0

    sd1 at esp0: target 1 lun 0
    sd1 is /sbus@1f,0/espdma@e,8400000/esp@e,8800000/sd@1,0

    sd2 at esp0: target 2 lun 0
    sd2 is /sbus@1f,0/espdma@e,8400000/esp@e,8800000/sd@2,0

    root on /sbus@1f,0/espdma@e,8400000/esp@e,8800000/sd@0,0:a fstyp
    e ufs
    zs0 at sbus0: SBus0 slot 0xf offset 0x1100000 Onboard device spa
    rc9 ipl 12
    zs0 is /sbus@1f,0/zs@f,1100000
    zs1 at sbus0: SBus0 slot 0xf offset 0x1000000 Onboard device spa
    rc9 ipl 12
    zs1 is /sbus@1f,0/zs@f,1000000
    keyboard is major minor
    mouse is major minor
    stdin is major minor
    stdout is major minor
    boot cpu (0) initialization complete - online
    ledma0 at sbus0: SBus0 slot 0xe offset 0x8400010
    le0 at ledma0: SBus0 slot 0xe offset 0x8c00000 Onboard device sp
    arc9 ipl 6
    le0 is /sbus@1f,0/ledma@e,8400010/le@e,8c00000
    lebuffer0 at sbus0: SBus0 slot 0x1 offset 0x40000
    le1 at lebuffer0: SBus0 slot 0x1 offset 0x60000 SBus level 4 spa
    rc9 ipl 7
    le1 is /sbus@1f,0/lebuffer@1,40000/le@1,60000
    dump on /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s1 size 1024448K
    panic[cpu0]/thread=0x3002bec0: zero
    syncing file systems... done
    2540 static and sysmap kernel pages
    39 dynamic kernel data pages
    183 kernel-pageable pages
    1 segkmap kernel pages
    0 segvn kernel pages
    0 current user process pages
    2763 total pages (2763 chunks)

    dumping to vp 601d307c, offset 2004688
    cpu0: SUNW,UltraSPARC (upaid 0 impl 0x10 ver 0x22 clock 143 MHz)

    SunOS Release 5.5.1 Version Generic_103640-24 [UNIX(R) System V
    Release 4.0]
    Copyright (c) 1983-1996, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
    mem = 131072K (0x8000000)
    avail mem = 127811584
    Ethernet address = 8:0:20:79:c1:1
    root nexus = Sun Ultra 1 SBus (UltraSPARC 143MHz)
    sbus0 at root: UPA 0x1f 0x0 ...
    espdma0 at sbus0: SBus0 slot 0xe offset 0x8400000
    dma1 at sbus0: SBus0 slot 0x1 offset 0x81000
    esp0 at espdma0: SBus0 slot 0xe offset 0x8800000 Onboard device
    sparc9 ipl 4
    esp1 at dma1: SBus0 slot 0x1 offset 0x80000 SBus level 3 sparc9
    ipl 5
    sd0 at esp0: target 0 lun 0
    sd0 is /sbus@1f,0/espdma@e,8400000/esp@e,8800000/sd@0,0

    sd1 at esp0: target 1 lun 0
    sd1 is /sbus@1f,0/espdma@e,8400000/esp@e,8800000/sd@1,0

    sd2 at esp0: target 2 lun 0
    sd2 is /sbus@1f,0/espdma@e,8400000/esp@e,8800000/sd@2,0

    root on /sbus@1f,0/espdma@e,8400000/esp@e,8800000/sd@0,0:a fstyp
    e ufs
    zs0 at sbus0: SBus0 slot 0xf offset 0x1100000 Onboard device spa
    rc9 ipl 12
    zs0 is /sbus@1f,0/zs@f,1100000
    zs1 at sbus0: SBus0 slot 0xf offset 0x1000000 Onboard device spa
    rc9 ipl 12
    zs1 is /sbus@1f,0/zs@f,1000000
    keyboard is major minor
    mouse is major minor
    stdin is major minor
    stdout is major minor
    boot cpu (0) initialization complete - online
    ledma0 at sbus0: SBus0 slot 0xe offset 0x8400010
    le0 at ledma0: SBus0 slot 0xe offset 0x8c00000 Onboard device sp
    arc9 ipl 6
    le0 is /sbus@1f,0/ledma@e,8400010/le@e,8c00000
    lebuffer0 at sbus0: SBus0 slot 0x1 offset 0x40000
    le1 at lebuffer0: SBus0 slot 0x1 offset 0x60000 SBus level 4 spa
    rc9 ipl 7
    le1 is /sbus@1f,0/lebuffer@1,40000/le@1,60000
    dump on /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s1 size 1024448K
    panic[cpu0]/thread=0x301a9ec0: lm_get_sysid: cached entry not fo
    und
    syncing file systems... done
    3116 static and sysmap kernel pages
    42 dynamic kernel data pages
    193 kernel-pageable pages
    0 segkmap kernel pages
    0 segvn kernel pages
    0 current user process pages
    3351 total pages (3351 chunks)

    dumping to vp 601d307c, offset

    physmem 3de7



    **************************************
    ** Process information from crash **
    **************************************

    dumpfile = vmcore.10, namelist = unix.10, outfile = stdout
    > PROC TABLE SIZE = 1978
    SLOT ST PID PPID PGID SID UID PRI NAME FLAGS
    0 t 0 0 0 0 0 96 sched load sys lock
    1 s 1 0 0 0 0 58 init load
    2 s 2 0 0 0 0 98 pageout load sys lock nowait
    3 s 3 0 0 0 0 60 fsflush load sys lock nowait
    4 s 402 400 400 400 60001 58 ns-httpd load jctl
    5 s 348 1 348 348 0 58 nsrexecd load jctl
    6 s 21941 1 475 475 0 40 start_hawk_gol load
    7 s 154 1 154 154 0 48 inetd load
    8 s 131 1 131 131 0 58 rpcbind load
    9 s 139 1 139 139 0 58 ypbind load
    10 s 159 1 159 159 0 58 statd load jctl
    11 s 161 1 161 161 0 59 lockd load
    12 s 133 1 133 133 0 43 keyserv load
    13 s 126 1 126 126 0 58 in.routed load
    14 s 189 1 189 189 0 59 automountd load
    15 s 193 1 193 193 0 58 syslogd load nowait
    16 s 287 1 0 0 18473 54 frg load
    17 s 222 1 222 222 0 58 lpsched load nowait
    18 s 229 222 222 222 0 58 lpNet load nowait jctl
    19 s 236 1 236 236 0 48 sendmail.8.8.5 load jctl
    20 s 212 1 212 212 0 52 nscd load
    21 s 206 1 206 206 0 28 cron load
    22 s 246 1 246 246 0 59 utmpd load
    23 s 272 1 272 272 0 48 snmpd load
    24 s 11735 154 154 154 0 58 ovtelnetd load
    25 s 688 1 688 688 0 58 sssd load nowait
    26 s 388 386 383 383 0 60 ns-admin load jctl
    27 s 382 1 0 0 0 48 ns-admin load jctl
    28 s 6008 206 206 206 0 60 cron load
    29 s 22258 1 475 475 0 58 disk_impl load
    30 s 386 383 383 383 0 58 ns-admin load jctl
    32 s 6017 206 206 206 0 60 cron load
    33 s 383 1 383 383 0 38 ns-admin load jctl
    34 s 400 1 400 400 60001 0 ns-httpd load jctl
    35 s 404 400 400 400 60001 59 ns-httpd load jctl
    36 s 405 400 400 400 60001 59 ns-httpd load jctl
    37 s 406 400 400 400 60001 59 ns-httpd load jctl
    38 s 414 1 414 414 0 60 ns-admin load nowait
    39 s 418 1 418 418 60001 58 uxwdog load
    40 s 419 418 418 418 60001 58 ns-httpd load nowait
    43 s 842 154 154 154 0 45 cachefsd load
    44 s 8337 154 8337 8337 0 28 in.rlogind load
    45 s 22058 22057 22058 22058 0 58 hawk load jctl
    46 s 570 1 570 570 60001 58 uxwdog load
    47 s 571 570 570 570 60001 58 ns-httpd load nowait
    48 s 5950 206 206 206 0 60 cron load
    50 r 22245 1 22245 22245 0 100 rvd load
    51 s 698 1 698 698 0 54 ttymon load
    52 s 714 697 697 697 0 58 ttymon load jctl
    53 s 697 1 697 697 0 58 sac load jctl
    55 s 671 1 0 0 249 58 gscgid load jctl
    59 s 5341 1 5339 5236 18473 40 frg load
    61 s 6020 6019 206 206 10048 60 sh load
    63 s 23525 23524 23525 23524 10972 58 ksh load
    64 s 11738 154 154 154 0 58 ovtelnetd load
    65 s 23711 23709 23711 23711 0 38 login load
    67 s 11034 11033 11034 11033 10974 58 ksh load
    69 s 22057 21941 475 475 0 59 perl load
    70 s 13052 154 13052 13052 0 28 in.rlogind load
    71 s 11740 11738 11740 11740 0 44 login load
    72 s 22264 1 475 475 0 58 st_impl load
    74 s 5999 21941 475 475 0 60 ps load
    76 s 6003 6002 206 206 10048 60 sh load
    77 s 6002 206 206 206 10048 38 sh load
    78 s 6001 206 206 206 0 60 cron load
    79 t 24903 16794 24903 13054 10954 31 getSkewFromHis load
    80 s 5998 206 206 206 0 60 cron load
    82 s 13054 13052 13054 13054 0 28 login load
    83 s 6021 154 154 154 0 58 ovtelnetd load
    84 s 8339 8337 8339 8339 0 44 login load
    86 s 6023 6021 6023 6023 0 48 login load
    87 s 5952 5951 206 206 10048 60 sh load
    88 s 16063 154 154 154 0 58 rpc.cmsd load
    89 s 13055 13054 13055 13054 10954 48 ksh load
    91 s 11776 11740 11776 11740 19171 58 csh load jctl
    92 s 11742 11737 11742 11737 19171 54 csh load jctl
    94 s 11737 11735 11737 11737 0 52 login load
    95 s 6016 206 206 206 0 60 cron load
    98 s 5951 206 206 206 10048 42 sh load
    99 s 5934 5933 206 206 144 60 sh load
    101 s 6014 206 206 206 0 60 cron load
    102 s 23709 154 23709 23709 0 38 in.rlogind load
    106 s 6018 206 206 206 0 60 cron load
    107 s 6011 206 206 206 10048 43 sh load
    109 s 5933 206 206 206 144 42 sh load
    111 s 5953 189 5953 5953 0 58 umount load
    113 s 8340 8339 8340 8339 10974 58 ksh load
    116 s 23522 154 23522 23522 0 54 in.rlogind load
    118 s 23524 23522 23524 23524 0 48 login load
    120 s 11033 11031 11033 11033 0 28 login load
    121 s 11031 154 11031 11031 0 38 in.rlogind load
    123 s 25245 154 154 154 0 58 sadmind load jctl
    126 s 6012 6011 206 206 10048 60 sh load
    130 s 6007 6005 6007 6007 0 46 login load
    131 s 16794 13055 16794 13054 10954 58 tcsh load jctl
    132 s 6013 154 154 154 478 18 in.rshd load nowait
    135 s 6000 206 206 206 0 60 cron load
    136 s 6010 206 206 206 0 60 cron load
    137 s 6019 206 206 206 10048 38 sh load
    138 s 6005 154 6005 6005 0 28 in.rlogind load
    140 s 23712 23711 23712 23711 10972 48 ksh load
    >


    ************************************************ ******
    ** Strings output of complete message ring buffer **
    ************************************************ ******

    Generic_103640-24
    lm_get_sysid: cached entry not found
    `H-?
    CL @
    0Ah}
    FPKu
    $P"
    @Hd@
    @@A
    X`ar0`@
    `|G8`PJh`
    8`vYh`ak
    P`D6
    H`DPP`A
    H`D-P`
    x`PQ
    m `v[
    p`|F
    `C* `@
    p`PY
    `EPP`s
    ``|F
    x`at
    `EA8`@
    `v[0`>
    (`ETp`
    8`E[
    H`C)
    H`C>
    `vGP`
    H`f#
    `LB@`O
    `au
    `C%@`C#x`C
    `axx`
    @`a~
    `vV8`s
    `}rH`@
    @`|Q

    ***********************
    ** Some Statistics **
    ***********************
    physmem 3de7


    ** Directory Name Lookup Cache Statistics **
    ----------------------------------------------
    ncsize:
    ncsize: 2181 Directory name cache size
    ncstats:
    ncstats: 61848318 # of cache hits that we used
    ncstats+4: 5161608 # of misses
    ncstats+8: 1523219 # of enters done
    ncstats+0xc: 1777 # of enters tried when already cached
    ncstats+0x10: 1676007 # of long names tried to enter
    ncstats+0x14: 1322750 # of long name tried to look up
    ncstats+0x18: 211239 # of times LRU list was empty
    ncstats+0x1c: 114368 # of purges of cache
    27 Hit rate percentage
    (See /usr/include/sys/dnlc.h for more information)


    ** Kernel Memory Request Statistics **
    ----------------------------------------
    Small Large Outsized
    symbol not found

    data address not found

    data address not found
    pagesize:
    pagesize: 8192 Memory page size
    (See /usr/include/sys/sysinfo.h for more information)


    ** Streams Statistics **
    --------------------------
    In use Total Maximum Failures
    symbol not found
    pagesize:
    pagesize: 2000 2000 1fff 0
    Queues
    maxautovec:
    maxautovec: 1 9de3bed0 f427a04c b407bfc8
    MsgBlks
    _kobj_boot+0xc: f227a048 b8103ff4 f027a044 ba102000
    LinkBlks
    (See /usr/include/sys/strstat.h for more information)

    physmem 3de7


    ** Shared Memory Tuning Variables (if in use) **
    --------------------------------------------------
    shminfo_shmmax:
    shminfo_shmmax: 536870912 Max segment size
    shminfo_shmmin:
    shminfo_shmmin: 1 Min segment size
    shminfo_shmmni:
    shminfo_shmmni: 256 Max identifiers
    shminfo_shmseg:
    shminfo_shmseg: 100 Max attached shm segs per proc

    physmem 3de7


    ** Semaphore Tuning Variables (if in use) **
    ----------------------------------------------
    seminfo_semmap:
    seminfo_semmap: 10 Entries per map
    seminfo_semmni:
    seminfo_semmni: 10 Max identifiers
    seminfo_semmns:
    seminfo_semmns: 60 Max in system
    seminfo_semmnu:
    seminfo_semmnu: 30 Max undos
    seminfo_semmsl:
    seminfo_semmsl: 25 Max sems per id
    seminfo_semopm:
    seminfo_semopm: 10 Max ops per semop
    seminfo_semume:
    seminfo_semume: 10 Max undos per proc
    seminfo_semusz:
    seminfo_semusz: 96 Max bytes in undos
    seminfo_semvmx:
    seminfo_semvmx: 32767 Max sem value
    seminfo_semaem:
    seminfo_semaem: 16384 Max adjust on exit

    physmem 3de7


    ** Message Queue Tuning Variables (if in use) **
    --------------------------------------------------
    symbol not found


    ************************************
    ** Current patch revision status **
    ************************************
    Patch: 103640-19 Obsoletes: 103591-09, 103658-02, 103920-05, 103600-18, 103609-02 Packages: SUNWcs
    u, SUNWcsr, SUNWkvm, SUNWcar, SUNWhea
    Patch: 103630-10 Obsoletes: Packages: SUNWcsu, SUNWcsr
    Patch: 104849-04 Obsoletes: 103006-06 Packages: SUNWcsu, SUNWcsr, SUNWhea
    Patch: 103582-15 Obsoletes: Packages: SUNWcsu, SUNWcsr
    Patch: 103603-07 Obsoletes: Packages: SUNWcsu
    Patch: 103612-39 Obsoletes: 103615-04, 103654-01 Packages: SUNWcsu, SUNWcsr, SUNWarc, SUNWscpu, SU
    NWfns, SUNWnisu, SUNWsra
    Patch: 103622-10 Obsoletes: Packages: SUNWcsu, SUNWcsr, SUNWhea
    Patch: 103623-03 Obsoletes: Packages: SUNWcsu
    Patch: 103627-02 Obsoletes: 103606-02, 105069-01 Packages: SUNWcsu, SUNWcsr, SUNWarc, SUNWbtool, S
    UNWhea, SUNWtoo, SUNWxcu4
    Patch: 103663-11 Obsoletes: 103683-01 Packages: SUNWcsu, SUNWcsr, SUNWhea

    ****************************************
    ** Hardware Configuration Information **
    ****************************************
    System Configuration: Sun Microsystems sun4u
    Memory size: 128 Megabytes
    System Peripherals (PROM Nodes):

    Node 0xf0029588
    idprom: 01800800.2079c101.00000000.79c101a9.00000000.00000 000.00000000.00000000
    reset-reason: 'S-POR'
    breakpoint-trap: 0000007f
    #size-cells: 00000002
    energystar-v2:
    model: 'SUNW,501-2836'
    name: 'SUNW,Ultra-1'
    clock-frequency: 044300e0
    banner-name: 'Sun Ultra 1 SBus (UltraSPARC 143MHz)'
    device_type: 'upa'

    Node 0xf002c7a4
    name: 'packages'

    Node 0xf0035cb0
    iso6429-1983-colors:
    name: 'terminal-emulator'

    Node 0xf0038a1c
    disk-write-fix:
    name: 'deblocker'

    Node 0xf00390e0
    name: 'obp-tftp'

    Node 0xf0042d10
    name: 'disk-label'

    Node 0xf0072654
    support:
    name: 'ufs-file-system'

    Node 0xf002c814
    stdout: fffe8810
    stdin: fffe8450
    mmu: fffea438
    memory: fffea638
    bootargs: 00
    bootpath: '/sbus@1f,0/espdma@e,8400000/esp@e,8800000/sd@0,0: a'
    gateway-ip: 00000000
    server-ip: 00000000
    client-ip: 00000000
    stdout-#lines: ffffffff
    name: 'chosen'

    Node 0xf002c880
    version: 'OBP 3.0.4 1995/11/26 17:47'
    model: 'SUNW,3.0'
    decode-complete:
    aligned-allocator:
    relative-addressing:
    name: 'openprom'

    Node 0xf002c910
    name: 'client-services'

    Node 0xf002c9b8
    tpe-link-test?: 'true'
    scsi-initiator-id: '7'
    keyboard-click?: 'false'
    keymap:
    ttyb-rts-dtr-off: 'false'
    ttyb-ignore-cd: 'true'
    ttya-rts-dtr-off: 'false'
    ttya-ignore-cd: 'true'
    ttyb-mode: '9600,8,n,1,-'
    ttya-mode: '9600,8,n,1,-'
    sbus-probe-list: '012'
    mfg-mode: 'off '
    diag-level: 'max'
    #power-cycles: '19'
    system-board-serial#: '5012854003306'
    system-board-date: '30c5fe19'
    fcode-debug?: 'false'
    output-device: 'screen'
    input-device: 'keyboard'
    load-base: '16384'
    boot-command: 'boot'
    auto-boot?: 'true'
    watchdog-reboot?: 'false'
    diag-file:
    diag-device: 'net'
    boot-file:
    boot-device: 'disk'
    local-mac-address?: 'false'
    ansi-terminal?: 'true'
    screen-#columns: '80'
    screen-#rows: '34'
    silent-mode?: 'false'
    use-nvramrc?: 'false'
    nvramrc:
    security-mode: 'none'
    security-password:
    security-#badlogins: '0'
    oem-logo?: 'true'
    oem-banner: '008216'
    oem-banner?: 'false'
    hardware-revision:
    last-hardware-update: '981112'
    diag-switch?: 'false'
    name: 'options'

    Node 0xf002ca28
    net-aui: '/sbus/ledma@e,8400010:aui/le@e,8c00000'
    net-tpe: '/sbus/ledma@e,8400010:tpe/le@e,8c00000'
    net: '/sbus/ledma@e,8400010/le@e,8c00000'
    disk: '/sbus/espdma@e,8400000/esp@e,8800000/sd@0,0'
    cdrom: '/sbus/espdma@e,8400000/esp@e,8800000/sd@6,0:f'
    tape: '/sbus/espdma@e,8400000/esp@e,8800000/st@4,0'
    tape1: '/sbus/espdma@e,8400000/esp@e,8800000/st@5,0'
    tape0: '/sbus/espdma@e,8400000/esp@e,8800000/st@4,0'
    disk6: '/sbus/espdma@e,8400000/esp@e,8800000/sd@6,0'
    disk5: '/sbus/espdma@e,8400000/esp@e,8800000/sd@5,0'
    disk4: '/sbus/espdma@e,8400000/esp@e,8800000/sd@4,0'
    disk3: '/sbus/espdma@e,8400000/esp@e,8800000/sd@3,0'
    disk2: '/sbus/espdma@e,8400000/esp@e,8800000/sd@2,0'
    disk1: '/sbus/espdma@e,8400000/esp@e,8800000/sd@1,0'
    disk0: '/sbus/espdma@e,8400000/esp@e,8800000/sd@0,0'
    scsi: '/sbus/espdma@e,8400000/esp@e,8800000'
    floppy: '/sbus/SUNW,fdtwo'
    ttyb: '/sbus/zs@f,1100000:b'
    ttya: '/sbus/zs@f,1100000:a'
    keyboard!: '/sbus/zs@f,1000000:forcemode'
    keyboard: '/sbus/zs@f,1000000'
    name: 'aliases'

    Node 0xf004e8e8
    reg: 00000000.00000000.00000000.04000000.00000000.10000 000.00000000.02000000.00000000.20000
    000.00000000.02000000
    available: 00000000.21f3e000.00000000.00014000.00000000.21c02 000.00000000.000c2000.00000000
    .20000000.00000000.01400000.00000000.10000000.00 000000.02000000.00000000.00000000.00000000 .04000000
    name: 'memory'

    Node 0xf004eec8
    reg: 000001fe.00000000.00000000.00008000
    slot-address-bits: 0000001c
    up-burst-sizes: 0078007f
    burst-sizes: 00f8007f
    device_type: 'sbus'
    name: 'sbus'
    model: 'SUNW,sysio'
    thermal-interrupt:
    bus-parity-generated:
    upa-portid: 0000001f
    clock-frequency: 017d7840

    Node 0xf0059d28
    internal-loopback:
    dma-model: 'apcdma'
    interrupts: 00000024
    reg: 0000000d.0c000000.00000200
    name: 'SUNW,CS4231'

    Node 0xf0059e34
    address: fffb6000
    reg: 0000000f.01900000.00000001
    name: 'auxio'

    Node 0xf0059ec4
    version: 4f425020.332e302e.34203139.39352f31.312f3236.20313 73a.34370050.4f535420.322e30
    2e.34203139.39352f30.392f3138.2030333a.353900
    model: 'SUNW,525-1410'
    reg: 0000000f.00000000.00080000.0000000f.01380000.00080 000
    name: 'flashprom'

    Node 0xf0059f8c
    status: 'disabled'
    device_type: 'block'
    interrupts: 00000029
    reg: 0000000f.01400000.00000008
    name: 'SUNW,fdtwo'

    Node 0xf005a0c0
    address: fffba000
    reg: 0000000f.01200000.00002000
    model: 'mk48t59'
    name: 'eeprom'

    Node 0xf005a174
    port-b-ignore-cd:
    port-a-ignore-cd:
    address: fffd8000
    interrupts: 00000028
    device_type: 'serial'
    reg: 0000000f.01100000.00000004
    name: 'zs'

    Node 0xf005a24c
    address: fffb0000
    port-b-ignore-cd:
    port-a-ignore-cd:
    keyboard:
    interrupts: 00000028
    device_type: 'serial'
    reg: 0000000f.01000000.00000004
    name: 'zs'

    Node 0xf005a394
    address: fffb8000
    model: 'SUNW,sc-up'
    reg: 0000000f.01300000.00000008
    name: 'sc'

    Node 0xf005a448
    reg: 0000000f.01304000.00000003
    name: 'SUNW,pll'

    Node 0xf006120c
    reg: 0000000e.08400000.00000010
    name: 'espdma'

    Node 0xf00614a0
    device_type: 'scsi'
    clock-frequency: 02625a00
    interrupts: 00000020
    reg: 0000000e.08800000.00000040
    name: 'esp'

    Node 0xf0063c50
    device_type: 'block'
    name: 'sd'

    Node 0xf0064688
    device_type: 'byte'
    name: 'st'

    Node 0xf0065370
    burst-sizes: 0000003f
    reg: 0000000e.08400010.00000020
    name: 'ledma'

    Node 0xf0065908
    device_type: 'network'
    busmaster-regval: 00000007
    interrupts: 00000021
    reg: 0000000e.08c00000.00000004
    name: 'le'

    Node 0xf0068194
    reg: 0000000e.0c800000.0000001c
    interrupts: 00000022
    name: 'SUNW,bpp'

    Node 0xf006a504
    model: 'SUNW,500-2015'
    reg: 00000001.00081000.00000010
    name: 'dma'

    Node 0xf006aff4
    device_type: 'scsi'
    clock-frequency: 02625a00
    intr: 00000003.00000000
    reg: 00000001.00080000.00000040
    name: 'esp'
    chip: 'FAS236'
    interrupts: 00000003

    Node 0xf006e9f0
    device_type: 'block'
    name: 'sd'

    Node 0xf006f53c
    device_type: 'byte'
    name: 'st'

    Node 0xf00700ec
    burst-sizes: 0000003f
    model: 'SUNW,500-2015'
    reg: 00000001.00040000.00020000
    name: 'lebuffer'

    Node 0xf0070330
    device_type: 'network'
    intr: 00000004.00000000
    busmaster-regval: 00000005
    reg: 00000001.00060000.00000004
    alias: 'le'
    name: 'le'
    interrupts: 00000004

    Node 0xf006a084
    manufacturer#: 00000017
    implementation#: 00000010
    mask#: 00000022
    sparc-version: 00000009
    ecache-associativity: 00000001
    ecache-line-size: 00000040
    ecache-size: 00080000
    #dtlb-entries: 00000040
    dcache-associativity: 00000001
    dcache-line-size: 00000020
    dcache-size: 00004000
    #itlb-entries: 00000040
    icache-associativity: 00000002
    icache-line-size: 00000020
    icache-size: 00004000
    upa-portid: 00000000
    clock-frequency: 088601c0
    reg: 000001c0.00000000.00000000.00000008
    device_type: 'cpu'
    name: 'SUNW,UltraSPARC'

    *****
    Done!
  • I've got this one computer at home that crashes EVERY time it hits runlevel 0. I think it's got somehting to do with apmd, but anyways, it's one of those computers that can turn themselves off through software. Normally, the last thing you see is:

    Stopping all md devices.
    System is halted.
    Power down.

    And at that point, you either have to turn it off yourself, or the software (apmd?) does it for you. Well this one box I have (a crappy HP I got for free) gets right to the words "power down" and then it dumps all sorts of crap onto the screen, including the values in the CPU's registers, and what I assume to be some crap from memory. What I'm thinking here though, is that since all the filesystems are already unmounted, LKCD wouldn't make a lick of difference for me. Am I right in assuming this?

  • How do you keep the state of both kernels the same? If you can't keep them in exactly the same state, you end up with a worse problem than if the machine just crashed. If you keep both in the same state, then they should both crash at the same time.
    In the UNIX worlds, machine oops and panic for a reason, because the machine is in an unstable state and continuing to execute would possibly allow data corrpution. This is a Good Thing (tm)
    If you need redundancy on this level, look at clustering technologies with process migration and n+1 sparing.
    --
    Mike Mangino Consultant, Analysts International
  • At least two journaled file systems will be in 2.4. Reiserfs and ext3 should both make it in. Posibly XFS as well (not heard any news about that one). Hey, and 64GB max memory in 2.4 as well (still 4GB max per process though).
  • by _damnit_ ( 1143 )
    " Memory dump files are created when a STOP error occurs, and the system is set to save debug information in the 'Startup/Shutdown' tab of the 'System' Control Panel."
    source: support.microsoft.com


    This is a real easy one to setup. The feature's not usually used on small workgroup servers because there's usually no one around who can do anything with a 256MB binary. I was going to say a lot of nasty things about dumb NT admins, but I thought I'd be nice as I was one (and will be again if the money's right).
    It's better to be uninformed than misinformed.


    _damnit_
  • " Memory dump files are created when a STOP error occurs, and the system is set to save debug information in the 'Startup/Shutdown' tab of the 'System' Control Panel."
    source: support.microsoft.com


    _damnit_
  • That wouldn't really solve the problem -- obviously, someone has a cronjob that runs a script to scan for new /. stories.

    Naturally, there are people and things we'd rather not deal with, but just like IRL, it's unavoidable. If that thought is too traumatic to deal with, you have two options:

    1. Set your threshold to > 1
    2. Keep your threshold to < 2, and just wait for the article to collect ~30 comments.

    Any kind of censorship (including an IP ban) is bad, bad, bad -- but what do I know? I'm just as much a part of the problem as anyone else.

  • A good hacker should be able to do with just a register dump, stack trace and some program text surrounding the instruction pointer where things went belly up.

    Hacking the kernel is supposed to be hard and tracing crashes given minimal information is a big part of the fun and attraction of ``iron man'' programming.

    Then again, having a full dump doesn't necessarily make debugging that much easier. It's an incremental improvement over oops text.

    Here is the real advantage: a dump is good from the point of view of users who need to report crashes to developers. I think that even a hack to get oops text (rather than a full dump) written to a partition would be better than asking the poor user to copy the oops text appearing on the frozen console down on a piece of paper! Forget it!
  • You need TWO PeeCees hooked together by serial
    port. Then you put one computer in "debug boot
    mode", and control the debugger using the other.

    Feh.

    On Solaris, you just grab the core and symbol
    files, and use adb. On just one computer, with
    no special boot modes, with the machine running
    whatever.

    Having this ability on linux will be very very
    convenient.
  • I think it's funny when the #1 post get's moderated as "Redundant". Although in the case of 1st posters, I guess we've heard it all before.

    -----------

    "You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

  • yup once, accessing a floppy drive, dont know why, dont want to know why cuz it's never happened since :)
  • Part of the problem with doing it under Linux is where do you dump to? And how do you know the location which the kernel points to for it to dump to isn't corrupted?
    This problem isn't unique to Linux. I don't know what SGI has done (either for Linux or IRIX), but an obvious approach is to use a fixed location on the disk, such as the tail end of logical cylinder 0 (normally unused), or to designate a special "core dump" partition.
    Most Unices (eg Solaris, Irix, HP/UX) have some hardware support to help with doing this AFAIK,
    Nope. It's all done in software. However, I could imagine that they might possibly have disk drivers with a special core-dump mode that is less dependent on the rest of the kernel, i.e., perhaps it would use polling rather than interrupts. On the other hand, maybe they just assume that the system is working well enough that the disk driver is OK. Often a panic that is caused in some other part of the system won't hurt the disk driver (although the file system code is more delicate, so a kernel dump ideally should bypass the FS).
    but with the wide variety of x86 hardware, not to mention all the other platforms Linux runs on, that's not a wonderful option in Linux.

    Even on other OSes the core dump doesn't always work. If things get sufficiently screwed up, the system can't write to the disk. But in my experience on other systems, core dumps work most of the time, which makes them quite worthwhile.

    I worked at a router company for five years (and am going to start a new job at another router company on Monday). Our routers could core dump either to floppy or across ethernet to a TFTP server. We found core dumps to be very useful, both during development, and for analyzing failures at customer sites (which we obviously tried hard to avoid).

    Some of the posters here seemed to question the utility of kernel core dumps, and point out that their kernel doesn't crash. While those people might not need the core dump feature, perhaps they should appreciate that it might help the developers maintain a high standard of quality going forward. As the Linux kernel continues to support an every increasing number of device types, expansion busses (such as 1394 and USB), file systems, etc., it will become correspondingly more difficult to keep it robust, and every tool that can be made available to the developers to assist with this should be welcomed.

  • And if a problem in a userland program causes the kernel to crash, not only is the userland program possibly broken, but the kernel is definitely broken. This core dump feature will help debug such problems.

    I've personally never seen a userland program crash the Linux kernel. The closest I've come is having bugs in the X server lock up the keyboard and display, but the machine was still running fine in all other regards, and I was able to telnet in and initiate a clean reboot.

  • This is *crazy*! That's like, uhm, like sort of a hack perpetrated by someone who was in a hurry and didn't know about prior art.
    Hey, give them a break. This is just the first release; if people like it and encourage them (or work on it themselves), it will undoubtedly get better with time. After all, ROM wasn't built in a day. :-)

  • This is good news!

    I liked this on IRIX, as it told me what each CPU was doing at the time of the crash in human readable form. While I maynot have know exactly what died it was nicer to get some idea than reading a hex chars. If you had an enterprise service level contract, SGI could then analyze the dump and determine what went wrong. Naturally, they're not the only OS vendor that can do it.

    BUT - it is great news to here that vendors with enterprise experience are improving Linux!

    Hmmm - why can't SGI make cobalt style machines? at least then we could afford some stocks...

  • Couldn't agree more, we have a farm of O2s and they crash like hell, by Unix standard that is; almost one crash per month. We had some code that would systematically crash machines with panic error. I just hope that what SGI has to contribute to Linux is not instability!!!!

  • strace -p pid

    Hope this helps...

  • If you got problems with APM, recompile your kernel and disable APM support. (It can't be apmd because init killed that a long time before.) If your APM is otherwise working fine, just disable the "Power Down on Halt" option. Then your computer will be a little quieter. You might want to remount everything read-only (mount -o remount,ro) and try 'apm -s' and 'apm -S' to see if your APM is messed up. Could be BIOS settings.

    I should stop trying to be a troubleshooter... well, I don't think LKCD would make any difference in this situation because you don't care. If it's a problem that happens when your computer should be dormant anyway, why bother trying to figure out what's wrong? Especially when there are better ways to go about doing that (fiddling with BIOS settings and such).

    And what are md devices, anyway? And why should I care? It magically disappeared when I got a new kernel, so I don't care anymore.

    Kenneth

  • Dunno about you, but my FreeBSD boxes all have truss...if Linux doesn't have a version of truss written for it yet, somebody definitely needs to work on it.
  • Hear, hear!

    This shouldn't be two hard to implement, just make a clone of or license someone elses boot prom. Like Apples FORTH interpreter or something. Start putting this on new PCI only boards, the ones without any serial/parallel/ps2 ports. There backwards compatability isn't a problem, you only need limited support from some popular OSs (Windows9x is really the only one that uses the BIOS for much of anything). Maybe you can even eschew Win9x compatability seeing that Win2K, BeOS, Linux, etc would be available at the time.

    Just my $0.02 US.
  • As someone who has been doing Linux device driver development for about a year and gotten annoyed at the lack of kernel development tools, it's really nice to see this. Now if only Linus would make Andrea Arcangeli's Intergrated Kernel Debugger a part of the standard tree, it would make day.
    --
    This comment is (©) Copyright Deepak Saxena.
  • This is a good thing, but it is part of a more general problem.

    And that problem is that we accept tools for Linux development that are distinctly sub par. There is a lot that could, and should, be done.

    I would say more, but I cannot possibly say it better than this rant [linuxcare.com] does.

    Cheers,
    Ben

    PS The Microsoft program works right and has a bad interface, the Linux program has a nice interface but sucks! Whodathunkit? (Read the link.)
  • Having done just a very quick glance over the specs I may be wrong, but I believe they are doing what they have been doing on the SGI for awhile. When a SGI running a newer flavor of IRIX does a system panic (SCSI, memory, whatever) it dumps a core out. Dumping this file is not for the drivespace week, if you have half a gig or ram you have a half a gig core file, but the beauty of this is it then automatically examines the core file and tries to figure out what killed it, you don't have to go in and run the debugger yourself.

    Having the machine tell you what memory page you were at when it took a dive makes life much nicer for the harried admin; of course if you want to dig through a core at a later time with your debugger you can but it gives you a good starting point, and tends to make tracking things down much quicker since you have a guess as to where the problem resides. Having your box tell you that you had a memory error in SIM 3 bringing the box down, having analysed the core file before you even have a chance to fire up your debugger, is a pretty nice thing.

    Of course this is dependant upon my assumption that it works in the same kind of fashion as Irix (which it seems to).
  • Part of the problem with doing it under Linux is where do you dump to? And how do you know the location which the kernel points to for it to dump to isn't corrupted? Most Unices (eg Solaris, Irix, HP/UX) have some hardware support to help with doing this AFAIK, but with the wide variety of x86 hardware, not to mention all the other platforms Linux runs on, that's not a wonderful option in Linux.

    With that said, this is a great thing in my opinion... though I haven't tried it yet to see exactly how they implemented it.

    --
    Jeremy Katz
  • by Anonymous Coward
    Actually in the support directory on the CD's are both the kernal symbols and i386 kd. Now there's not a lot of documentation on this on the Cd, but if you buy the Book Inside Windows NT you will get an introduction to the kernal debugger. (Also some of this information is in the Device Driver kit). If you are supporting NT, you need at the Platform SDK and the DDK kit.
  • But a fat lot of good a kernel debugger does you on a closed-source OS.

    NT had the future almost in its grasp, but let it slip away by being impossibly unreliable and horribly admin-unfriendly compared to any Unix product. [We worked with it for a year but eventually had to discard it as a worthless toy.)

    But that was then. Now it's just plain obsolete. Face it.
  • Heh, yeah, and wouldn't it be sad when MS would find out that it's illegal for then to use the code, because the BSDL conflicts with the GPL!
    --------
    "I already have all the latest software."
  • And there are some non-Unix OSses that do that as well. In a previous job, we had a Netapp machine. If it crashed, you could dump out the kernel - which was cool because then you could ftp 80 Mb (or something like that) of core dumps to Netapps, and they would have a look. Which sometimes resulted in kernel patches a couple of weeks later.

    -- Abigail

  • Maybe you're an unusually strong source of gamma radiation :-)
  • >Hacking the kernel is supposed to be hard and tracing crashes given minimal information is a big part of the fun and attraction of ``iron man'' programming

    That's fine if your goal is to compensate for deficiencies elsewhere in your life by making yourself feel like an "iron man" programmer. If your goal is instead to produce working quality kernel code, you eventually ask yourself "why make an intrinsically difficult task even more difficult by not using the best tools available"?

    If self-flagellation or self-denial are good things, might as well go all the way, right? Go build your own computer...from sand and copper ore, using no tools but those you make yourself. Come back when you're done.
  • NT saves it in swap as long as the swap partition is on the same drive as the boot partition. Again, RTFM. The serial port option is only an option and is NOT the default or usual manner for memory dumps.
    As someone else in this thread commented, the dump is of the entire contents of memory. This changes in Win2000, but I have not personally seen this.


    _damnit_
  • Well, the only reason I care is that it doesn't work correctly. It's a problem, perhaps in the kernel, that, while insignificant, is still a problem. I'd like to see Linux be as nifty as it could be. I can see the kind of treatment people would give windows if it blue screened right after blinking "It's now safe to turn of your crappy winbox".
  • Look into the KDE screensaver.

    the BSOD is alive and well on my FreeBSD desktop.
  • by jafac ( 1449 )
    For me it's not the size of the binary file - I was already used to 256 - 512 Meg binary memory dumps of Netware (I guess now they have some sort of selective tool for NW 5 that makes the dumps much smaller).

    What others have pointed out, and what I was saying is that, on my side of the phone, that does me NO good. Unless my customer has MS Visual Studio on it (which, by the way, usually screws up the delicate mix of MFC dlls and causes problems of it's own), this file is useless.

    On Netware, you could drop into the debugger, even on a production file server, check a few pages of the stack, and the registers, and jump back, and quite often, not greatly interrupt service (if you did it within the timeout period of the Netware Clients). Not possible on NT.
    You learned ONE tool, console debugger, and it was the SAME interface and commands as the tool that examined the coredump files on your DOS machine at your leisure. I quite often used to talk customers through debugger sessions on the phone to gather information. Even when the customer was totally non-technical. This is not possible for NT, because if you're lucky, and the customer HAS a debugger, it most likely isn't one you're familliar with. And if the customer is non-technical (MUCH more likely on NT than Novell), again, you're SOL.

    On NT, your ONLY option is, 99% of the time, is to get the memory file transported to you (FTP or whatever), and send it to a programmer who has the time and the very expensive software to debug it. With Novell, ME, a non-programmer, a tech support guy, without a costly subscription to MSDN, without a costly copy of MS Visual Studio or SoftICE, could quickly and cheaply debug problems, compare the call stack to other incidents to see if it's a similar problem, or distill the pertinant information down to a paragraph or two and email it to a developer for debugging or suggestions; and if that wasn't enough info for the developer, I could THEN resort to getting the whole file, or trying to reproduce the problem.

    The thing is, the integrated debugger solution gave support some granularity in how much resources were devoted to a problem. Now, we either have to be equipped like a developer (COSTLY!), or we have to forward MOST cases to a developer (COSTLY, and ugly!).

    I know that Microsoft's reason for this was that an integral debugger compromises security (in theory, you could look up user-data with it that you wouldn't otherwise have rights to).
    IMO, this is totally lame, because if the administrator was worried about security, the debugger could be disabled and locked out. And for cases where a debugger was needed, the administrator could go into the user setup, and check the box that enables the debugger.
    The real reason was probably so they could increase the value of MS Visual Studio, and ask a higher price. Before NT came out, a debugger was commonly considered a necessity of life, and I can't think of one OS (other than Windows95) that a debugger didn't ship free of charge with (even dos had DEBUG.COM).

    I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
  • hm. If I was granted moderator points more often than once every 9 months, I'd moderate you up.

    This is JUST what I'm looking for, well, it answers most of my complaints. Unfortunately, it does seem to be W2K only, not NT 4, which is likely to represent 99% of my install base for well past 12 months. (I seriously doubt that there will be any significant migration to W2K until this time next year. Oh, there will be a few early adopters, but among MY customers - almost nobody plans on putting it into production).

    I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
  • >NT has had this for years, where have you been?
    running mission critical apps on unix with fantastic uptime.

    >Hiding under the Unix rock?
    if that means remotely administering and monitoring hundreds of multiuser servers from your office, then ... yes.

    >if more Unix people would actually try NT...
    sorry, we have,we did, and finally our managers have stopped making us try to deploy on it... I developed a deathly serious allregic reaction to BSOD and rebooting, and I'm not going to try windows again until it includes a decent shell like bash, ksh, tcsh and an xserver.
  • The SCSI partition requirement is only because raw I/O only works for SCSI right now. As soon as an IDE driver works for raw I/O under linux2.X.Y, the LKCD project should be very easy to make work with IDE swap partitions. Please review http://oss.sgi.com/projects/lkcd/faq.html [sgi.com] for more information about restrictions.
  • Oops tracing may be fun, but if you're on any kind of schedule, or you're doing commercial support, crash dumps are *well* worth it.
  • We actually ran into very few crashes, so we added code to the kernel to crash it for us with user level commands. The code for crashing the kernel is listed on the LKCD FAQ page: http://oss.sgi.com/projects/lkcd/faq.html [sgi.com]
  • by Anonymous Coward
    http://softick.8m.com/ [8m.com]

    Possibly others would work as well. Check out http://www.suddendischarge.com/debugg ers.html [suddendischarge.com] for just about every (free/shareware) debugger ever made.
  • NetBSD can dump a core for the kernel. In fact, so can many other OS's.

    The trick is writing a nice little routine that is solid enough and self-contained enough to dump the memory to disk when the kernel dies.

    Of course this doesn't alway work. The exception handler code might be messed up or the disk controller might be in some bad state, but for the most part, kernel exceptions aren't so fatal that they wedge the machine.
  • Well, ext3 is fairly simply, on disk it is ext2 with a log file (its self a regular file), reiserfs is coming along. What goes in may not be feature complete, but from the word on the reiserfs mailing list is that they both will make it into 2.4, and should be in 2.3 fairly soon. Perhaps they will be flagged experimental in the early 2.4 kernels.
  • > What exactly are you supposed to do with a kernel core dump under a closed source OS?

    Figure out what application was running when your system hung, tell your support provider, and get them to fix it.
  • This is great.

    I think SGI is going to more for linux than most people expect. They are helping us move into the Enterprise so much faster than I ever thought possible. You should look at their web page and see all the code they have contributed, it is very nice. SGI may be strugling, but they have a large cash reserve, and are staking their existance on Linux.

    I hope they succed and will personally see that I get as many SGI servers around here as possible

    geach
  • Sorry to disappoint you, but not only are you not first, but the previous _six_ posts (a new record for Slashdot!) are not lame "First Post" posts.
  • Never mind. I read down a little further and read the article.

    --
    Max V.
  • >We have redundant power supplies, hard drives, and many other pieces of hardware. I am thinking it may be good for developpers, at any rate, to use redundant kernels.
    >...
    >Interrupt in service: a few clock cycles

    Sorry, but this doesn't work. You'd have to replicate the entire kernel address space including that used by drivers and on behalf of user programs for it to be effective. Many crashes actually result from corruption of some part of kernel memory, so if the two kernels share data they'd both crash at once. In addition, because the in-kernel data structures kept on their behalf might be different (if the two kernels were precisely identical they'd also crash in tandem) the user programs would have to be duplicated too. Now you've halved your memory and CPU resources, plus you're effectively doing a context switch "every few instructions" to go from one kernel to the other. Your performance is going to be totally abysmal.

    The solution? Do what fault-tolerant systems already do and replicte the hardware as well. Been there, done that, works OK but gives lousy performance/dollar compared to non-FT alternatives. If you don't want to pay that premium you can go with a clustered highly available system such as the ones I once helped develop. Unlike an FT system, an HA system will allow an interruption when a component fails, but the duration of that interruption will be very short relative to a "vanilla" non-FT non-HA system. Also, in the absence of failures the component nodes of an HA cluster (a well-designed one, anyway) are able to process their own independent workloads instead of sitting around idle or duplicating each other's work.
  • by jafac ( 1449 ) on Friday November 05, 1999 @09:52AM (#1559381) Homepage
    I think that this was one of the greatest features of Novell - the fact that if your server was barfing, you could go into the debugger, and neuter an offending process; or if the server was really in trouble, it would drop into the debugger, so you could at least figure out what went wrong, or dump the memory image and send it to someone who could.

    And also, it's one of the things I really, really, really HATE about NT. No debugger comes with the OS, and there's no free, distributable one out there, so from a tech support standpoint, if your customer's server barfs, you kind of have to guess at what went wrong, or establish a pattern from multiple calls, or try to reproduce it in-house. Switching from supporting Netware products to NT products has been hell, and this is 90% of the reason. This kind of thing in Linux can only help "the cause". (and because my company is working on some fairly significant Linux products, and I may end up supporting them, this makes me more optimistic about the future.)

    I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
  • by Otto ( 17870 ) on Friday November 05, 1999 @09:54AM (#1559383) Homepage Journal
    I've noticed that under Solaris that I've got core files after a crash.

    As I understand it, the core files (which are not just Solaris, BTW) are a memory dump when an application crashes. I believe that it wasn't possible to do this with a kernel, because the kernel is the guy who is actually writing the core file. I'm probably wrong in specific bits here.

    Anyway, core files can be extremely handy for debugging and such. They're just not very easy to examine. :-)


    ---
  • this guy probably running a script to post 'FIRST POST!!!' every time. or just plain _cOUgH_eGGhEad_cOUgH_.
    --
  • The NetApp is a BSD machine. NetBSD if I'm not mistaking.

    You are mistaken. NetApp boxes do *N*O*T* run any flavor of BSD as their OS.

    The underlying kernel is one written at NetApp; it doesn't support multiple address spaces, any notion of userland, or demand paging (heck, until recently, it didn't even change the page tables; it now uses the paging hardware, but only to make virtually contiguous physically-discontiguous pages, to make allocation of large chunks of memory a bit less painful).

    A significant part of the of the code did from BSD - the networking stack came from BSD (4.4-Lite, with some bits of the FreeBSD and NetBSD stacks thrown in), as did many of the commands (although those had to be chainsawed a bit to run in kernel mode in a shared address space), as did the dump and restore code (although the dump code was significantly changed to work with our WAFL file system). Various support routines also came from various BSDs as well, and the NFS server code is somewhat remotely derived from the BSD code (although it was also significantly changed to fit into our environment as well).

    However, that doesn't mean NetApp boxes run anything you'd recognize as "BSD" (and, in particular, the crash-dumping code isn't BSD-derived, although the savecore command is based on the BSD command, although, again, significantly modified to run in our environment, and to extract the core dump information from the core dump areas on the disks).

    (Yes, I know this first hand. I'm one of the developers there, and have been since early 1994.)

  • The most recent Linux 2.3.25 kernel does not have ext3. ext3 is still way alpha. Linux 2.3 is already under feature freeze. If Linus plans to release Linux 2.4 by 2000 Q1, I doubt ext3 will be part of it.
  • by roystgnr ( 4015 ) <`gro.srengots' `ta' `yor'> on Friday November 05, 1999 @11:32AM (#1559398) Homepage
    People here are saying that yes, even NT has the ability to dump kernel core when it BSODs, but:

    What exactly are you supposed to do with a kernel core dump under a closed source OS? Throw a printout of it into a bonfire to propitiate the Windows Demons? Send it to Microsoft and wait for their rigorous QA process to leap into action and send you a fixed kernel? I can't imagine trying to debug it yourself without being able to get a backtrace and look at the problem source code. Does Microsoft even leave a symbol table of internal function names in the NT kernel? What exactly do you do with a Kernel Debugger in Solaris if you can't see anything more than what a disassembler will tell you about the kernel being debugged?
  • I was just thinking the other day that running Linux in a VM in Linux would be handy for, among other things, somewhat more secure network services (Mail, web services, etc.) Run your server in a virtual machine and who cares if it gets cracked? Just wipe it clean and reinstall (Once you get it the way you like it, you could write the image to CD and just restore from CD every time you reboot.)
  • The core files you're seeing save the segment of memory in which the program was running. They can be used in conjunction with a debugger and image with debugging information to recreate the state of the application when it crashed, enabling the programmer to glean information about which instruction caused the crash.

    Dumping the kernel on a crash is not new but it is useful, in much the same way.

    Under HP-UX, as far as I remember, when the kernel crashes it is dumped into the swap device starting backwards from the end of swap. One of the first actions of the boot sequence (and boy can that take a long time) is to check whether there is a kernel image written in swap. If so, it's copied out and can be sent back to the kernel team for investigation.

    Of course, if your boot sequence doesn't copy out the kernel, you've got a finite time to get it out yourself before it's overwritten by the ever-advancing swap data.

    -John

  • I think that this is excellent news. And more so for Linux than any other system.

    It is crucially important that a community project like Linux have good debugging tools, both from the perspective of quality control, and to encourage others to get involved in the community.

    Other systems that are open but don't actively encourage contributions, or worse yet are closed - well, these debuggers are usefull in the sense that it helps pin point a problem. But in many cases you don't have control of the source code, so there isn't much you can do except mail it to the developers. If they even have a place to mail it to.

  • by yakker ( 78512 ) on Friday November 05, 1999 @12:18PM (#1559407)
    I figured I'd include an example of a crash dump analysis report that is created in /var/log/vmdump. This is what you'll get after a kernel panic (or something similar to it). You can also run 'lcrash' on the map/vmdump files and perform interactive analysis, such as a 'dump' of memory, or a 'dis'assemble of some instructions, etc. Sorry, the spacing's not going to look exactly right ...



    =======================
    LCRASH CORE FILE REPORT
    =======================

    GENERATED ON:
    Thu Nov 4 19:15:19 1999


    TIME OF CRASH:
    Fri Nov 5 03:12:27 1999


    PANIC STRING:
    User created crash dump

    MAP:
    map.5

    VMDUMP:
    vmdump.5

    ================
    COREFILE SUMMARY
    ================

    The system died due to a software failure.

    ===================
    UTSNAME INFORMATION
    ===================

    sysname : Linux
    nodename : peak-pc.engr.sgi.com
    release : 2.2.13
    version : #1 SMP Fri Nov 5 02:59:34 PST 1999
    machine : i686
    domainname : engr.sgi.com

    ===============
    LOG BUFFER DUMP
    ===============

    Linux version 2.2.13 (root@peak-pc.engr.sgi.com) (gcc version egcs-2.91.66 19990314/Linux (egcs-1.1.2 release)) #1 SMP Fri Nov 5 02:59:34 PST 1999
    mapped APIC to ffffe000 (0026f000)
    mapped IOAPIC to ffffd000 (00270000)
    Detected 348940216 Hz processor.
    Console: colour VGA+ 80x25
    Calibrating delay loop... 348.16 BogoMIPS
    Memory: 95448k/98304k available (1100k kernel code, 424k reserved, 1268k data, 64k init)
    Checking 386/387 coupling... OK, FPU using exception 16 error reporting.
    Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
    POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
    per-CPU timeslice cutoff: 100.26 usecs.
    CPU0: Intel Pentium II (Deschutes) stepping 02
    SMP motherboard not detected. Using dummy APIC emulation.
    PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xfcaee
    PCI: Using configuration type 1
    PCI: Probing PCI hardware
    Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.2
    Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039
    NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0 for Linux NET4.0.
    NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
    IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP
    Starting kswapd v 1.5
    Detected PS/2 Mouse Port.
    Serial driver version 4.27 with no serial options enabled
    ttyS00 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
    ttyS01 at 0x02f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A
    pty: 256 Unix98 ptys configured
    PIIX4: IDE controller on PCI bus 00 dev 39
    PIIX4: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
    ide0: BM-DMA at 0xffa0-0xffa7, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:pio
    ide1: BM-DMA at 0xffa8-0xffaf, BIOS settings: hdc:DMA, hdd:pio
    hda: WDC AC24300L, ATA DISK drive
    hdc: NEC CD-ROM DRIVE:28C, ATAPI CDROM drive
    ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
    ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
    hda: WDC AC24300L, 4112MB w/256kB Cache, CHS=524/255/63, UDMA
    hdc: ATAPI 32X CD-ROM drive, 128kB Cache
    Uniform CDROM driver Revision: 2.56
    Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M
    FDC 0 is a National Semiconductor PC87306
    (scsi0) found at PCI 14/0
    (scsi0) Narrow Channel, SCSI ID=7, 3/255 SCBs
    (scsi0) Warning - detected auto-termination
    (scsi0) Please verify driver detected settings are correct.
    (scsi0) If not, then please properly set the device termination
    (scsi0) in the Adaptec SCSI BIOS by hitting CTRL-A when prompted
    (scsi0) during machine bootup.
    (scsi0) Cables present (Int-50 YES, Ext-50 NO)
    (scsi0) Downloading sequencer code... 413 instructions downloaded
    scsi0 : Adaptec AHA274x/284x/294x (EISA/VLB/PCI-Fast SCSI) 5.1.20/3.2.4

    scsi : 1 host.
    (scsi0:0:6:0) Synchronous at 20.0 Mbyte/sec, offset 15.
    Vendor: IBM Model: DDRS-34560 Rev: S97B
    Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02
    Detected scsi disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 6, lun 0
    scsi : detected 1 SCSI disk total.
    SCSI device sda: hdwr sector= 512 bytes. Sectors= 8925000 [4357 MB] [4.4 GB]
    3c59x.c:v0.99H 11/17/98 Donald Becker http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/drivers/vortex.h tml
    eth0: 3Com 3c905B Cyclone 100baseTx at 0xdc00, 00:c0:4f:90:6e:54, IRQ 11
    8K byte-wide RAM 5:3 Rx:Tx split, autoselect/Autonegotiate interface.
    MII transceiver found at address 24, status 786d.
    MII transceiver found at address 0, status 786d.
    Enabling bus-master transmits and whole-frame receives.
    Partition check:
    sda: sda1 sda2 sda3
    hda: hda1 hda2
    VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly.
    Freeing unused kernel memory: 64k freed
    EXT2-fs warning: mounting unchecked fs, running e2fsck is recommended
    EXT2-fs warning: mounting unchecked fs, running e2fsck is recommended
    dump_open(): dump device opened: 0x803 [sd(8,3)]
    Adding Swap: 130748k swap-space (priority -1)
    Adding Swap: 130748k swap-space (priority -2)
    Kernel panic: User created crash dump
    Dumping to device 0x803 [sd(8,3)] ...
    Writing dump header ...
    Writing dump pages ...

    ====================
    CURRENT SYSTEM TASKS
    ====================

    ADDR UID PID PPID STATE PRI FLAGS MM NAME
    ================================================ ==============================
    c0234000 0 0 0 0 0 0 c0215320 swapper
    c5ffa000 0 1 0 1 20 100 c5fb4060 init
    c5fe8000 0 2 1 1 20 40 c0215320 kflushd
    c5fe6000 0 3 1 1 20 40 c0215320 kupdate
    c5fe4000 0 4 1 1 20 840 c0215320 kpiod
    c5fe2000 0 5 1 1 20 840 c0215320 kswapd
    c59ec000 1 248 1 1 20 140 c5fb4260 portmap
    c5686000 0 263 1 1 20 140 c5fb4460 ypbind
    c578c000 0 270 263 1 20 140 c5fb44e0 ypbind
    c5644000 0 324 1 1 20 140 c5fb42e0 syslogd
    c5602000 0 335 1 1 20 140 c5fb43e0 klogd
    c55c4000 0 349 1 1 20 40 c5fb4560 atd
    c5c3c000 0 363 1 1 20 40 c5fb41e0 crond
    c55a2000 0 381 1 1 20 140 c5fb45e0 inetd
    c5518000 0 395 1 1 20 140 c5fb4660 snmpd
    c5348000 0 409 1 1 20 40 c5fb46e0 named
    c52fe000 0 423 1 1 20 140 c5fb4760 routed
    c5272000 0 437 1 1 20 140 c5fb47e0 xntpd
    c523e000 0 451 1 1 20 140 c5fb4860 lpd
    c51e4000 0 469 1 1 20 140 c5fb48e0 rpc.statd
    c5194000 0 480 1 1 20 40 c5fb4960 rpc.rquotad
    c5174000 0 491 1 1 20 40 c5fb49e0 rpc.mountd
    c5158000 0 515 1 1 20 140 c5fb4ae0 rpc.rstatd
    c513e000 0 529 1 1 20 140 c5fb4a60 rpc.rusersd
    c511e000 99 543 1 1 20 40 c5fb4b60 rpc.rwalld
    c50f6000 0 557 1 1 20 140 c5fb4be0 rwhod
    c513c000 0 577 1 1 20 140 c5fb4360 rpc.yppasswdd
    c5078000 0 589 1 1 20 140 c5fb4ce0 amd
    c5086000 0 591 1 1 20 40 c0215320 rpciod
    c504a000 0 592 1 1 20 40 c0215320 lockd
    c4f54000 0 626 1 1 20 140 c5fb4de0 sendmail
    c4f22000 0 641 1 1 20 140 c5fb4d60 gpm
    c4e12000 0 655 1 1 20 140 c5fb4e60 httpd
    c4e0a000 99 658 655 1 20 140 c5fb4ee0 httpd
    c4e06000 99 659 655 1 20 140 c5fb4f60 httpd
    c4dfc000 99 660 655 1 20 140 c4dfe040 httpd
    c4df2000 99 661 655 1 20 140 c4dfe0c0 httpd
    c4de8000 99 662 655 1 20 140 c4dfe140 httpd
    c4dde000 99 663 655 1 20 140 c4dfe1c0 httpd
    c4dd4000 99 664 655 1 20 140 c4dfe240 httpd
    c4dcc000 99 665 655 1 20 140 c4dfe2c0 httpd
    c4dc0000 99 666 655 1 20 140 c4dfe340 httpd
    c4db6000 99 667 655 1 20 140 c4dfe3c0 httpd
    c4a28000 0 699 1 1 20 140 c4dfe540 smbd
    c499e000 0 710 1 1 20 140 c4dfe4c0 nmbd
    c4658000 9 767 1 1 20 40 c4dfe840 actived
    c48a2000 0 806 1 1 20 100 c5fb4c60 mingetty
    c4928000 0 807 1 1 20 100 c5fb4160 mingetty
    c4904000 0 808 1 1 20 100 c4dfe7c0 mingetty
    c498a000 0 809 1 1 20 100 c4dfe440 mingetty
    c4766000 0 810 1 1 20 100 c4dfe5c0 mingetty
    c4c6e000 0 811 1 1 20 100 c4dfe640 mingetty
    c479e000 0 812 1 1 20 100 c4dfe8c0 getty
    c4798000 0 817 381 1 20 100 c5fb40e0 in.rlogind
    c4976000 0 818 817 1 20 100 c4dfe740 login
    c45b8000 0 819 818 1 20 100 c4dfe6c0 tcsh
    c5204000 0 838 819 0 20 0 c4dfe940 crashdump

    ===========================
    STACK TRACE OF FAILING TASK
    ===========================

    ================================================ ================
    STACK TRACE FOR TASK: 0xc5204000 (crashdump)

    0 __dump_execute+153 [0xc010da21]
    1 dump_execute+149 [0xc011b925]
    2 panic+167 [0xc0114b6f]
    3 sys_setpriority+25 [0xc0115689]
    4 system_call+45 [0xc0107a61]
    ================================================ ================

  • by EngrBohn ( 5364 ) on Friday November 05, 1999 @09:59AM (#1559412)
    So if you play with a x.(2y+1).z kernel while rubbing your feet on the carpet and a lightning rod attached to an ISA slot, then this is for you. If you only use a x.(2y).z kernel with z>2, then this'll probably do nothing more than occupy disk space.
    Christopher A. Bohn
  • Just about every other OS I know of (except for NT) includes this. Having a Kernel Debugger, Kernel Core Dump, and a few other tools available over the past few *YEARS* has saved me a lot of hassle. If Linux hasn't had this till now, I'm sooooooooooo sorry. Thats really dissapointing.
    *BSD, Solaris, Dynix, and bazillions of other OS'es have had this ever since they were created.
  • I don't think I've EVER had my kernel crash on me...

    OK, I could see as how it might help the developers... ;-)

  • Doesn't NT come with that useless 'Dr Watson' thing that, whenever something crashes, wastes your time with an unkillable dialogue box? Surely it must do _something_ useful - what is this 'application error log' that it keeps trying to create?

    Also, Netscape license a thing called Full Circle that sends information back to Netscape HQ following a Navigator crash.
  • It's not very likely to be a problem with a userland program, but rather something with the kernel itself -- maybe a third-party kernel module, or something you're hacking.

    --

  • This sounds *EXACTLY* like the way BSD kernels have, since the dawn of time, handled panics. If you have enough swap space, the kernel dumps a complete core image (in a special format) to the swap device. Then, on boot, it extracts it before enabling swap, and copies a kernel over. (Goes in /var/crash, if such a place exists.)

    I've used this to debug (or have someone else debug) kernel panics on BSD/OS and NetBSD systems. It's a *very* nice feature, because, in the real world, you often have a crash that can't be encouraged to happen right when the engineer is handy.

    Common feature, been available for years. I just *assumed* Linux had it.

A person with one watch knows what time it is; a person with two watches is never sure. Proverb

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