Re: Logging

["nate" <debian-user@aphroland.org>]

Debian User said:

> electric blue colored power supply (call me a trendy bastard I
> dont care). What I want is to be able to catch some indication
> of what is happening when these lockups occur.
> Thanks.

your best bet is use a serial console. Often times logs from
such events never make it to the disk before the system dies,
but sometimes they can make it to the screen/console. But if
your away from the system, it may be in "screensaver" mode and
not be "wake-upable" to see the messages on the screen. Or even
if it is, usually the ability to scroll up/down is lost when
the system dies. serial console works around this(it's helped
me on many occasions).

I had a BP6 a few years ago and it locked up constantly. randomly,
nothing was ever logged to the logs. Spent over a year trying
to stabilize it then gave up.

you'll need a 2nd computer, a null modem cable, and a terminal
emulator(I use minicom). Configure the boot loader and kernel
for serial console(there are some HOWTOs on this, it's real easy)
then awaaaaaaaaaay you go ..good luck. I reccomend you use
a terminal emulator that has logging capabilities, minicom can
log. My last problem-chasing session involved logging kernel
oops's, the system would have about 30 oops's before panicing,
which exceeded the default scroll buffer for minicom. But of
course not the log buffer!

and if possible, revert as much hardware to it's previous
state to eliminate chances that it would be the cause of
failure. Also if you can revert kernels that would be
good too. Other then X, the kernel is the only thing I can
think of that could possibly be involved in a system lockup.
If you can reproduce the lockup w/o X, then that is even
better. I hate troubleshooting this kinda stuff, takes forever!

check the bios for the voltage/temp settings on your system
be sure that the power supply is putting out good clear
voltage. Though most motherboards will refuse to boot if
the voltage isn't good enough, I'd expect the BP6 to do
the same.

good luck

nate