Linux配置kdump大小,Kdump配置及测试

How do I configure kexec/kdump on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5?

Release

Found:Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5

Note:for

virtualized guests,xendumpmust be used. Please see the

article .

Overview

Kexecis a fastboot mechanism that allows booting a Linux kernel from the

context of an already running kernel without going through the BIOS. The BIOS

can be very time consuming, especially on big servers with numerous

peripherals. This can save a lot of time for developers who end up booting a

machine numerous times.

Kdumpis a new kernel crash dumping mechanism and is very reliable. The

crash dump is captured from the context of a freshly booted kernel and not from

the context of the crashed kernel. Kdump

uses kexec to boot into a second

kernel whenever the system crashes. This second kernel, often called a capture

kernel, boots with very little memory and captures the dump image.

The first kernel reserves a section of memory that the

second kernel uses to boot. Be aware that the kdump reserves a significant amount of

memory at the boot time, which changes the actual minimum memory requirements

of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. To compute the actual minimum memory

requirements for a system, refer to

for the listed minimum memory requirements and add the amount of memory used by

kdump to determine the actual minimum

memory requirements.

Kexecenables booting the capture kernel without going through BIOS hence

the contents of the first kernel's memory are preserved, which is essentially

the kernel crash dump.

Installing Kdump

Verify the kexec-tools

package is installed:

# rpm -q kexec-tools

If it is not installed proceed to install it via yum:

# yum install kexec-tools

Specifying Kdump Location

The location of the Kdump

vmcore must be specified in /etc/kdump.conf.

Not specifying the vmcore location will result in undefined behavior. You can

either dump directly to a device, to a file, or to some location on the network

via NFS or SSH.

Dumping Directly to a Device

You can configure Kdump

to dump directly to a device by using the raw directive in kdump.conf. The

syntax to be used is

raw devicename

For example:

raw /dev/sda1

Please be aware that this will overwrite any data that was

previously on the device.

Dumping to a file on Disk

Kdumpcan be configured to mount a partition and dump to a file on disk.

This is done by specifying the filesystem type, followed by

the partition in kdump.conf.

The partition may be specified as a device name, a filesystem label, or UUID in

the same manner as /etc/fstab.

The default directory in which the core will be dumped is /var/crash/%DATE/ where %DATE is the current

date at the time of the cash dump. For example:

ext3 /dev/sda1

will mount /dev/sda1 as an ext3 device and dump the core to

/var/crash/, whereas

ext3 LABEL=/boot

will mount the device that is ext3 with the label /boot. On

most Red Hat Enterprise Linux installations, this will be the /boot directory.

The easiest way to find how to specify the device is to look at what you're

currently using in /etc/fstab. The

default directory in which the core will be dumped is /var/crash/%DATE/ where %DATE is the current

date at the time of the crash dump. This can be changed by using the path

directive in kdump.conf. For example:

ext3 UUID=f15759be-89d4-46c4-9e1d-1b67e5b5da82path /usr/local/cores

will dump the vmcore to /usr/local/cores/

instead of the default /var/crash/

location.

Dumping to a Network Device using NFS

To configure kdump to dump to an NFS mount, edit /etc/kdump.conf and add a line with the

following format:

net :/nfs/mount

For example:

net nfs.example.com:/export/vmcores

This will dump the vmcore to /export/vmcores/var/crash/[hostname]-[date]

on the server nfs.example.com. The

client system must have access to write to this mount point.

Dumping to a Network Device using SSH

SSH has the advantage of encrypting network communications

while dumping. For this reason this is the best solution when you're required

to dump a vmcore across a publicly accessible network such as the Internet or a

corporate WAN.

net user@

For example:

net kdump@crash.example.com

In this case, kdump will use scp to connect to the crash.example.com server using the kdump user. It will copy the vmcore to the /var/crash/[host]-[date]/ directory. The

kdump user will need the necessary write permissions on the remote server.

To make this change take effect, run service kdump propagate, which should result

in output similar to the following:

Generating new ssh keys... done,kdump@crash.example.com's password:/root/.ssh/kdump_id_rsa.pub has been added to~kdump/.ssh/authorized_keys2 on crash.example.com

Specifying Page Selection and Compression

On large memory systems, it is advisable to both discard

pages that are not needed and to compress remaining pages. This is done in kdump.conf with the core_collector command. At this point in

them the only fully supported core collector is makedumpfile. The options can be viewed with

makedumpfile --help. The -d option specifies which types of pages

should be left out. The option is a bit mask, having each page type specified

like so:

zero pages= 1cache pages= 2cache private = 4userpages= 8freepages= 16

In general, these pages don't contain relevent information.

To set all these flags and leave out these pages, use a value of -d 31. The -c tells makedumpfile to compress the

remaining data pages.

#core_collector makedumpfile -d 1# throw out zero pages (containing no data)#core_collector makedumpfile -d 31# throw out all trival pages#core_collector makedumpfile -c# compress all pages, but leave them allcore_collector makedumpfile -d 31 -c# throw out trival pages and compress (recommended)

Keep in mind that using the -d and -c

options will marginally increase the ammount of time required to gather a

cores.

Adding Boot Parameters

Modify some boot parameters to reserve a chunk of memory

for the capture kernel. For i386 and x86_64 architectures, edit /etc/grub.conf, and append crashkernel=128M@16M

to the end of the kernel line.

Note: It may be possible to use less than 128M, but testing with only 64M has proven unreliable. This is an example of /etc/grub.conf with the kdump options added:

# grub.conf generated by anaconda## Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file# NOTICE:You do not have a /boot partition.This means that#all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /, eg.#root (hd0,0)#kernel /boot/vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/hda1#initrd /boot/initrd-version.img#boot=/dev/hdadefault=0timeout=5splashimage=(hd0,0)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gzhiddenmenutitle Red Hat Enterprise Linux Client (2.6.17-1.2519.4.21.el5)root (hd0,0)kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.17-1.2519.4.21.el5 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet crashkernel=128M@16Minitrd /boot/initrd-2.6.17-1.2519.4.21.el5.img

Testing

After making the above changes, reboot the system. The 128M of memory (starting 16M into the memory) is left untouched by the

normal system, reserved for the capture kernel. Take note that the output of free -m shows 128M less memory than without this parameter, which is

expected.

Now that the reserved memory region is set up, turn on the

kdump init script and start the service:

#chkconfig kdump on#service kdump start

This should load the kernel image image via kexec, leaving the system ready to capture a

vmcore upon crashing. To test this, force-crash the system using sysrq:

# echo "c" > /proc/sysrq-trigger

This causes the kernel to panic, followed by the system

restarting into the kdump kernel. When

the boot process gets to the point where it starts the kdump service, the vmcore should be copied

out to disk to the location you specified in the /etc/kdump.conf file.

NOTE:Console frame-buffers and X are not properly supported. On a system

typically run with something like "vga=791" in the kernel config line

or with X running, console video will be garbled when a kernel is booted via

kexec. Note that the kdump kernel should still be able to create a dump, and

when the system reboots, video should be restored to normal.