Comment So, the value is... (Score 3) 206
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:
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.
