On Wednesday, September 22, 2010 5:15:25 pm Ken Smith wrote: > On 9/22/10 5:02 PM, Andriy Gapon wrote: > > on 22/09/2010 22:58 John Baldwin said the following: > > > >> Agreed. FWIW, I actually think that this is the only change needed as > >> crashinfo is enabled by default in 8.x and later. We already include > >> symbols > >> in kernels by default now, so just setting dumpdev will give you the same > >> info you generally can get from a textdump in the form of a simple > >> /var/crash/core.txt.N file. > >> > >> The other benefit of full crashdumps + crashinfo as compared to textdumps > >> is > >> that a developer can request further information in a PR followup (fire up > >> kgdb and enter command 'X' and reply with the output). With a textdump any > >> info not collected by the textdump is lost once the machine reboots after > >> the > >> crash. > > > > Agree++ > > But what was the reason that dumpdev="AUTO" was reverted? > > I remember that POLA was quoted at the time. > > I am not sure what the astonishment actually was - perhaps 'AUTO' was not > > smart > > enough and destroyed somebody's data? > > > > > Not everybody would notice /var getting full of crash dumps. > Picture a server farm where for the most part the machines > are all just plain on auto-pilot. If one or several develop > a problem that causes panic's /var can become full and possibly > cause the machine to stop doing something important (between > panic's...). I wasn't around when the initial decision for > what to have it set to was made but this was the reason for > me starting to do it again when I realized I forgot to at > least once, and hence the reference to POLA. > > Crash dumps are good for individual workstations. Crash > dumps are good for servers *if* the admin knows they're > having a problem and is actively working on that server > to resolve the issue. But they're no so good and can > cause nasty side-effects if they're happening on a machine > not being watched over closely. That's the reason for > the change in setting when a -stable branch gets started.
FWIW, the Y! version of crashinfo auto-deletes crash dumps based on the available disk space for precisely this reason. With that addition crashinfo works quite well on a very large server farm. -- John Baldwin _______________________________________________ svn-src-head@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/svn-src-head To unsubscribe, send any mail to "svn-src-head-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
