conf/118255: savecore never finding kernel core dumps (rcorder problem)

[Mike Makonnen]

On Sat, 2007-12-01 at 11:10 +0000, Jeremy Chadwick wrote:
> The following reply was made to PR conf/118255; it has been noted by GNATS.
> 
> From: Jeremy Chadwick <koitsu at FreeBSD.org>
> To: bug-followup at FreeBSD.org
> Cc:  
> Subject: Re: conf/118255: savecore never finding kernel core dumps (rcorder
> 	problem)
> Date: Sat, 1 Dec 2007 02:55:36 -0800
> 
>  This is great information; thanks for providing it! I found it quite
>  educational/informational.  The documentation Antony provided seems to
>  indicate two things:
>  
>  1) That savecore(8) should really be run before swapon(8) -- I don't see
>  any indication that swap needs to be made available prior to mounting
>  filesystems, which is what Doug B. was stating was a necessity.

The dependency if I recall correctly is: savecore needs file systems
mounted, which need to be fsck(8)ed, which may need swap depending on
the size of the file systems. The real problem is fsck(8). It can be
a real memory hog in some situations (in which case it will need swap
to function properly). If at all possible I would recommend increasing
the size of the swap partition as a work-around.
  

>  2) That even regardless of Item #1, savecore(8) should be working
>  (assuming that kernel dumps are still written from the end of the swap
>  device to the front (e.g. backwards)), and that swapon(8) shouldn't be
>  stomping on kernel dumps.

Yes, if the size of the swap partition is big enough that the two
don't collide. Apparently, in this case the swap space probably isn't
large enough.

Cheers.
-- 
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