VMCORE NOT FOUND

[Ryan Sommers]

Ashwin Chandra said:
> I actually changed dumpdir to /usr/crash since /var did not have enough
> space to accomodate 512 MB.  But /usr has 60gigs. When the kernel panics
> it
> just crashes, I never get a message saying "dumping...". Savecore upon

You dump to a device, not a path. Because the kernel is crashing
file-system consistency can't be assumed. Therefore you can't dump to a
file-system. Instead you dump to a device, typically the swap device. Then
after you reboot and ensure ensure file-system integrity you can save the
dump onto the file-system for analysis.

I believe you are getting a little mixed up in all the terms:

dump device: the device the kernel will save a dump to. (This is a device,
not a file-system path)

dump dir: the file-system path a core from the dump device will be saved
to by savecore.

The kernel does not dump to the dump dir. The kernel dumps to the dump
device, the savecore utility retrieves a previous dump from the dump
device and saves it in the dump dir.

Like most things, this is outlined very well in the handbook:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/developers-handbook/kerneldebug.html#KERNELDEBUG-OBTAIN

-- 
Ryan Sommers
ryans at gamersimpact.com