What do I do with a kernel panic's dump?

[Lowell Gilbert]

Alexander Mayfield <alexmayfield at carolina.rr.com> writes:

> Right, so I've got my 6.0-RELEASE up and running, and I'm slowly, but
> surely getting it configured how I like it.  80x50 console, all my
> favorite programs, life is quite good.
> 
> However, just recently, when browsing the web, the kernel panicked on
> me.  I was currently just browsing the web in Opera, doing a
> portsmanager -u in the my second console, with centericq running in 7
> and irssi in 8.  Since I was in X at the time, I had no idea what it
> was doing until it rebooted itself.  When I rebooted, I found out that
> it had made a few files in my /var/crash/ directory, how thoughtful.
> The shorter of the two files read like the following:
> 
> Dump header from device /dev/ad1s2b
>    Architecture: i386
>    Architecture Version: 2
>    Dump Length: 1072234496B (1022 MB)
>    Blocksize: 512
>    Dumptime: Sat Mar  4 07:27:20 2006
>    Hostname: alexmax.localdomain
>    Magic: FreeBSD Kernel Dump
>    Version String: FreeBSD 6.0-RELEASE #0: Thu Nov  3 09:36:13 UTC 2005
>      root at x64.samsco.home:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC
>    Panic String: vm_page_insert: page already inserted
>    Dump Parity: 3300035405
>    Bounds: 0
>    Dump Status: good
> 
> The other one was quite large, so I will not bore you with the details
> unless you need them.  However, from there, I have no clue what to do
> with the dumps.. I now ask where should I start looking for
> problems...or perhaps what information should I give you?

Take a look at the FAQ entry titled "How can I make the most of the
data I see when my kernel panics?"