partial dumps (was Re: Change default dumpdir to /usr/crash?)

[Steve Kargl]

On Mon, May 03, 2004 at 10:17:21AM -0400, Andrew Gallatin wrote:
> 
> Another good idea (perhaps in combination with a larger /var) is to
> accept and port to -current the Duke "partial dump" patches. These
> patches allow the user to optionally dump just the kernel virtual
> address space.  This results in dumps that are generally less than
> 100MB, rather than multiple gigs.
> 
> In nearly all cases, only the kernel address space is needed to
> interpret a dump.  From what I've seen, this is what Solaris, AIX, and
> Tru64 do by default.
> 
> Porting to -current will be non-trivial because of the dump changes
> between 4.x and 5.x.   If I was to do this, is there any chance that 
> it could get into the tree?
> 

I would support the integration of the changes.  With 
dual opteron systems capacities of 16 to 24 GB of memory,
partial dump goes from a "nice to have feature" to a
"we need this feature."

-- 
Steve