System information

kexec and kdump 213
In the Dump Target window, select the type of the dump target and the URL where
you want to save the dump. If you selected a network protocol, such as FTP or SSH,
you need to enter relevant access information as well.
Fill the Email Notification window information if you want kdump to inform you
about its events via E-mail and confirm your changes with OK after fine tuning
kdump in the Expert Settings window. kdump is now configured.
18.7 Analyzing the Crash Dump
After you obtain the dump, it is time to analyze it. There are several options.
The original tool to analyze the dumps is GDB. You can even use it in the latest envi-
ronments, although it has several disadvantages and limitations:
• GDB was not specifically designed to debug kernel dumps.
• GDB does not support ELF64 binaries on 32-bit platforms.
• GDB does not understand other formats than ELF dumps (it cannot debug com-
pressed dumps).
That is why the crash utility was implemented. It analyzes crash dumps and debugs
the running system as well. It provides functionality specific to debugging the Linux
kernel and is much more suitable for advanced debugging.
If you want to debug the Linux kernel, you need to install its debugging information
package in addition. Check if the package is installed on your system with zypper
se kernel | grep debug.
IMPORTANT: Repository for Packages with Debugging Information
If you subscribed your system for online updates, you can find “debuginfo”
packages in the *-Debuginfo-Updates online installation repository rel-
evant for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP3. Use YaST to enable the
repository.
To open the captured dump in crash on the machine that produced the dump, use a
command like this:
crash /boot/vmlinux-2.6.32.8-0.1-default.gz /var/
crash/2010-04-23-11\:17/vmcore