CentOS - kernel crash

whysyn · 10-05-2009, 02:34 PM

Maybe I've just missed too much sleep, but I can't for the life of me figure out where dumps from kernel crashes go...

Nothing in syslogs indicating the crash, just a gap from everything running normal until when somebody power cycles the server. Is it possible the thing is crashing so hard it can't dump?

BTW: CentOS 5.3 x86_64, fully patched as of last night.

DrLove73 · 10-05-2009, 03:45 PM

As much as I figured this out, RHEL/CentOS doesn not have Dumping running by default. Adn it should dump kernel in /var/crash I think.

Here is how to make dumping running: http://paix.org.ua/linux/crashdebug.html

When did it start to crash? Any connection with updates?

whysyn · 10-06-2009, 07:24 AM

It was freshly installed 2 days ago. I know the hardware is good though; it was running OpenFiler under an extremely high load all year.

My gut tells me it was probably XFS related. I've run XFS in CentOS before by using the centosplus kernel without problems. This time I saw they had a module that plugs into the stock kernel and decided to give it a whirl. Just wish I could find a definite answer as right now I don't trust the box, and it will be serving a pretty downtime-sensitive task.