Hi all, We are having problems with a couple of machines in which we have openbsd 3.9 and 4.0 running. We are currently trying to figure out what is causing our problems and for that reason I have set up a serial console in one of the computers connected to another one from which I can connect using minicom.
I have set the following options on /etc/sysctl.conf ddb.panic=1 # 0=Do not drop into ddb on a kernel panic ddb.console=1 # 1=Permit entry of ddb from the console And it works, it enters ddb when I send a BREAK over the serial console. The mentioned machine didn't have swap activated (It has plenty of RAM and almost no use at all), but it looks like "boot dump" needs a swap device where to dump the contents of memory so on rebooting, savecore would save it under /var/crash. For that I have enabled a swap partition on a secondary disk, partition wd1i with four times the amount of RAM just to play safe. As I am not using the default swap device (which I believe it is wd0b), I have compiled a custom kernel in which I have *only* changed this line: #config bsd swap generic config bsd root on wd0a swap on wd1i dumps on wd1i I know that I should stick to the GENERIC kernel that comes with openbsd, but I have not found a way to specify where to dump or where the default device points to, after reading boot(8), config(8). Also, I have set the following option on the /etc/sysctl.conf vm.swapencrypt.enable=0 to avoid having the swap encrypted. So, the thing is to test whether we can dump the contents of RAM into the swap using "boot dump" so when we get a crash (that happens randomly) we can do it and have the dump file for further analysis if necessary. But, whenever I send a BREAK over the serial console and enter ddb, this is what I get when I type "boot dump": ddb> boot dump syncing disks... panic: tsleep: not SONPROC Stopped at Debugger+0x4: leave RUN AT LEAST 'trace' AND 'ps' AND INCLUDE OUTPUT WHEN REPORTING THIS PANIC! DO NOT EVEN BOTHER REPORTING THIS WITHOUT INCLUDING THAT INFORMATION! A panic. I know that I should be sending all the information from trace and ps, and dmesg and stuff (I have it all), but I was wondering that it might be something that I am actually doing wrong rather than a problem with boot dump itself. I can send it if any of you wants to have a look at it. I would highly appreciate if anyone could give any hints on what I am doing wrong or if there is some fundamental step that I missed while trying to set up the system to enable boot dump. I might have, however, forgotten to write everything on this email, but I think I followed all there is on the man pages and all I could find on our friend google. Thanks a lot guys. -- Jeszs Roncero <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> System Developer Tel: +44 (0) 845 666 7778 http://www.mxtelecom.com
