how to capture freebsd 6.3 kernel panics [solved]

[no at spam at mgEDV.net]

On Fri, February 1, 2008 12:46, Manolis Kiagias wrote:
>
> no at spam@mgEDV.net wrote:
>> On Fri, February 1, 2008 11:54, Manolis Kiagias wrote:
>>
>>> no at spam@mgEDV.net wrote:
>>>
>>>> hi,
>>>>
>>>> since i migrated from 6.2-REL to 6.3-REL i got several
>>>> panics when copying much data from one volume to another.
>>>> because of the copy-job taking several hours, i don't
>>>> get a realistic chance to CATCH the stupid panic and
>>>> see what's going on (or at least get an idea of).
>>>> this is really frustrating me!
>>>>
>>>> is there a way to avoid the auto-reboot?
>>>>
>>>> is there a way to save the panic to disk?
>>>>
>>>> btw, there's no swap partition i could use as dump device.
>>>>
>>>> cheers...
>>>>
>>>>
>>> I recently had a system that would not dump to the swap partition for
>>> one reason or the other.
>>> I used an external USB hard disk, and it dumped there with no problems.
>>> With the current sizes of cheap usb flash drives, even that is probably
>>> an option.
>>> You may wish to explore this solution.
>>>
>>> Manolis
>>>
>>>
>>
>> well, although this is a good idea (and i'll keep it
>> as my backup plan for now) , i rather like to
>> prevent the server from rebooting and simply stay at
>> the panic instead of analyzing crash dumps :)
>> is there a way for that?
>>
>>
>>
> Well, according to this:
>
> http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/developers-handbook/kerneldebug-options.html
>
> compiling your kernel with options KDB will cause it to enter the
> debugger instead of automatic reboot. This is not something I ever tried
> myself but it maybe worth the trouble.
>
> Manolis
>

yeah, in the mean time, i exactly did this.
loaded /usr/src/sys, compiled with options KDB, options DDB
and booted with that kernel. this gives me at least the option
to SEE what happened...

thx for the replies, guys!