How do I debug kernel panic that occurs while running X?
Hi list,
For the better part of a year, now, something has been causing my machine to
freeze. The mouse stops moving on the screen, pressing any key (including keys
that should toggle lights) does nothing. The freezes are intermittent, without
warning, and I've been unable to determine if there is any particular cause.
I think the kernel is panicking, but I can't tell for sure. I don't think it
caused by my hardware, either, because a Windows 7 install (Wintendo) seems to
operate fine. The problem has never happened while I've been using the console,
mostly because I'm there very rarely and I do the vast majority of my work in
X. It's a desktop machine, after all.
If it weren't for the fact of X being in the way when this happens, I might be
far closer to finding the root cause of the problem I'm seeing. But the fact
that I am unable to get any information at all from the kernel when the freeze
occurs means I haven't been able to get anywhere with it in all this time. And
yet it happens about once every few days. It's terrifically frustrating.
I tried to get kdump working. I got as far as getting kexec running, and kdump
claims to successfully load its kernel, but when I either manually cause a
test panic or the bug happens, the kernel fails to start new, and so kdump
never gets a chance to do its thing. kexec works fine to perform a regular
restart the machine, though - which is irritating, actually, because it gets
in the way when I wish to reboot into Wintendo.
This issue is actually beginning to cause me some distress. There must be a
way to extract panic info when X is running - how would the graphics driver
writers debug things, otherwise?
So does anyone have any suggestions as to how I can make some progress on
diagnosing this?
I'd appreciate being CC'd on replies, as I'm not sub'd to the list. Thanks!
Peace,
Brendon
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