Retrieving info from panics while in X

[Robert Watson]

On Tue, 29 Aug 2006, Jos Backus wrote:

> I was wondering if anybody has any plans to address the issue of retrieving 
> panic/debugging information about crashes happening while X is running.
>
> For example, -current has been broken for me for several days now; it will 
> reliably crash within an hour or so while the main thing I'm doing is 
> running Opera under KDE. But without X, no crash. How does one obtain panic 
> information in this situation?

The typical approaches are:

(1) Set up a serial console and use that for debugger work; alternatively, use
     a firewire console.

(2) Set up the system not to entre the debugger, but just to panic and dump
     core.

I prefer the first of those options, myself, since I find the DDB debugging 
environment extremely useful, especially since it's quite aware of things like 
the kernel lock environment, etc.

Robert N M Watson
Computer Laboratory
University of Cambridge