svn commit: r197065 - in stable/8: etc/defaults lib/libc/stdlib sys/amd64/conf sys/i386/conf sys/ia64/conf sys/pc98/conf sys/powerpc/conf sys/sparc64/conf

[John Baldwin]

On Thursday 10 September 2009 10:32:29 am Ken Smith wrote:
> On Thu, 2009-09-10 at 10:23 -0400, John Baldwin wrote:
> > > --- stable/8/etc/defaults/rc.conf     Thu Sep 10 13:20:27 2009        
(r197064)
> > > +++ stable/8/etc/defaults/rc.conf     Thu Sep 10 14:04:00 2009        
(r197065)
> > > @@ -549,7 +549,7 @@ lpd_flags=""              # Flags to lpd (if enabled
> > >  nscd_enable="NO"     # Run the nsswitch caching daemon.
> > >  chkprintcap_enable="NO"      # Run chkprintcap(8) before running lpd.
> > >  chkprintcap_flags="-d"       # Create missing directories by default.
> > > -dumpdev="AUTO"               # Device to crashdump to (device name, 
AUTO, or NO).
> > > +dumpdev="NO"         # Device to crashdump to (device name, AUTO, or 
NO).
> > >  dumpdir="/var/crash" # Directory where crash dumps are to be stored
> > >  savecore_flags=""    # Used if dumpdev is enabled above, and present.
> > >  crashinfo_enable="YES"       # Automatically generate crash dump 
summary.
> > 
> > Are we sure we want to change this?  It is set to "AUTO" in stable/7.
> 
> It has been pointed out to me on the mailing lists that leaving it on
> for stable/7 was an oversight, it is off on previous branches.
> 
> I can understand the motivation for it.  In a data center full of
> production machines crash dumps cause reboots to take longer and
> potentially cause disk space issues.  In those sorts of environments
> it's best if by *default* the crash dumps don't happen and if an admin
> finds they need it they turn it on.
> 
> This is one of those "There is no right answer" things...

Hmm, I thought the crashdumps were a conscious descision as part of another 
change in 7.x (shipping with debug symbols enabled by default) to try to make 
it easier to get more useful crash reports from stock kernels.  Having the 
debug symbols present is probably enough for that though since it is fairly 
easy to enable crashdumps in rc.conf vs. having to build a new kernel just to 
get debug symbols.  Should we change the default behavior in 7?

-- 
John Baldwin