Kexec/Kdump HOWTO – linux kernel crash dump
Kexec/Kdump HOWTO
Introduction
Kexec and kdump are new features in the 2.6 mainstream kernel. These features
are included in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. The purpose of these features
is to ensure faster boot up and creation of reliable kernel vmcores for
diagnostic purposes.
Overview
Kexec
Kexec is a fastboot mechanism which allows booting a Linux kernel from the
context of already running kernel without going through BIOS. BIOS can be very
time consuming especially on the big servers with lots of peripherals. This can
save a lot of time for developers who end up booting a machine numerous times.
Kdump
Kdump is a new kernel crash dumping mechanism and is very reliable because
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 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. Kexec enables booting the capture kernel without going through BIOS
hence contents of first kernel’s memory are preserved, which is essentially
the kernel crash dump.
Kdump is supported on the i686, x86_64, ia64 and ppc64 platforms. The
standard kernel and capture kernel are one in the same on i686, x86_64
and ia64, while ppc64 requires a separate capture kernel (provided by the
kernel-kdump package) at this time.
If you’re reading this document, you should already have kexec-tools
installed. If not, you install it via the following command:
# yum install kexec-tools
Now load a kernel with kexec:
# kver=`uname -r` # kexec -l /boot/vmlinuz-$kver
–initrd=/boot/initrd-$kver.img \\
–command-line=”`cat /proc/cmdline`”
NOTE: The above will boot you back into the kernel you’re currently running,
if you want to load a different kernel, substitute it in place of `uname -r`.
Now reboot your system, taking note that it should bypass the BIOS:
# reboot
How to configure kdump:
Again, we assume if you’re reading this document, you should already have
kexec-tools installed. If not, you install it via the following command:
# yum install kexec-tools
If you’re on ppc64, you’ll first need to install the kernel-kdump package:
# yum install kernel-kdump
To be able to do much of anything interesting in the way of debug analysis,
you’ll also need to install the kernel-debuginfo package, of the same arch
as your running kernel, and the crash utility:
# yum –enablerepo=\\*debuginfo install kernel-debuginfo.$(uname -m) crash
Next up, we need to modify some boot parameters to reserve a chunk of memory
for the capture kernel. For i686 and x86_64, edit /etc/grub.conf, and append
“crashkernel=128M@16M” to the end of your kernel line. Similarly, append
the same to the append line in /etc/yaboot.conf for ppc64, followed by a
/sbin/ybin to load the new configuration (not needed for grub). On ia64,
edit /etc/elilo.conf, adding “crashkernel=256M@256M” to the append line for
your kernel. Note that the X@Y values are such that X = the amount of memory
to reserve for the capture kernel and Y = the offset into memory at which
that reservation should start.
Examples:
# cat /etc/grub.conf
# grub.conf generated by anaconda # # Note that you do not have to rerun grub
after making changes to this file # NOTICE: You have a /boot partition.
This means that # all kernel and initrd paths are relative to
/boot/, eg. # root (hd0,0) # kernel /vmlinuz-version ro
root=/dev/VolGroup00/root # initrd /initrd-version.img #boot=/dev/hda
default=0 timeout=5 splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz hiddenmenu title
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (2.6.17-1.2621.el5)
root (hd0,0) kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.17-1.2621.el5 ro
root=/dev/VolGroup00/root crashkernel=128M@16M initrd
/initrd-2.6.17-1.2621.el5.img
# cat /etc/yaboot.conf
# yaboot.conf generated by anaconda
boot=/dev/sda1 init-message=Welcome to Red Hat Enterprise Linux!\\nHit <TAB>
for boot options
partition=2 timeout=80 install=/usr/lib/yaboot/yaboot delay=5 enablecdboot
enableofboot enablenetboot nonvram fstype=raw
image=/vmlinuz-2.6.17-1.2621.el5
label=linux read-only initrd=/initrd-2.6.17-1.2621.el5.img
append=”root=LABEL=/ crashkernel=128M@16M”
# cat /etc/elilo.conf
prompt timeout=20 default=2.6.17-1.2621.el5 relocatable
image=vmlinuz-2.6.17-1.2621.el5
label=2.6.17-1.2621.el5 initrd=initrd-2.6.17-1.2621.el5.img read-only
append=”– root=LABEL=/ crashkernel=256M@256M”
After making said changes, reboot your system, so that the X MB of memory
starting Y MB into your memory is left untouched by the normal system,
reserved for the capture kernel. Take note that the output of ‘free -m’ will
show X MB less memory than without this parameter, which is expected. You
may be able to get by with less than 128M, but testing with only 64M has
proven unreliable of late. On ia64, as much as 512M may be required.
Now that you’ve got that reserved memory region set up, you want to turn on
the kdump init script:
# chkconfig kdump on
Then, start up kdump as well:
# service kdump start
This should load your kernel-kdump image via kexec, leaving the system ready
to capture a vmcore upon crashing. To test this out, you can force-crash
your system by echo’ing a c into /proc/sysrq-trigger:
# echo c > /proc/sysrq-trigger
You should see some panic output, followed by the system restarting into
the kdump kernel. When the boot process gets to the point where it starts
the kdump service, your vmcore should be copied out to disk (by default,
in /var/crash/<YYYY-MM-DD-HH:MM>/vmcore), then the system rebooted back into
your normal kernel.
Once back to your normal kernel, you can use the previously installed crash
kernel in conjunction with the previously installed kernel-debuginfo to
perform postmortem analysis:
# crash /usr/lib/debug/lib/modules/2.6.17-1.2621.el5/vmlinux
/var/crash/2006-08-23-15:34/vmcore
crash> bt
and so on…
Advanced Setups:
In addition to being able to capture a vmcore to your system’s local file
system, kdump can be configured to capture a vmcore to a number of other
locations, including a raw disk partition, a dedicated file system, an NFS
mounted file system, or a remote system via ssh/scp. Additional options
exist for specifying the relative path under which the dump is captured,
what to do if the capture fails, and for compressing and filtering the dump
(so as to produce smaller, more manageable, vmcore files).
In theory, dumping to a location other than the local file system should be
safer than kdump’s default setup, as its possible the default setup will try
dumping to a file system that has become corrupted. The raw disk partition and
dedicated file system options allow you to still dump to the local system,
but without having to remount your possibly corrupted file system(s),
thereby decreasing the chance a vmcore won’t be captured. Dumping to an
NFS server or remote system via ssh/scp also has this advantage, as well
as allowing for the centralization of vmcore files, should you have several
systems from which you’d like to obtain vmcore files. Of course, note that
these configurations could present problems if your network is unreliable.
Advanced setups are configured via modifications to /etc/kdump.conf,
which out of the box, is fairly well documented itself. Any alterations to
/etc/kdump.conf should be followed by a restart of the kdump service, so
the changes can be incorporated in the kdump initrd. Restarting the kdump
service is as simple as ‘/sbin/service kdump restart’.
Note that kdump.conf is used as a configuration mechanism for capturing dump
files from the initramfs (in the interests of safety), the root file system is
mounted, and the init process is started, only as a last resort if the
initramfs fails to capture the vmcore. As such, configuration made in
/etc/kdump.conf is only applicable to capture recorded in the initramfs. If
for any reason the init process is started on the root file system, only a
simple copying of the vmcore from /proc/vmcore to /var/crash/$DATE/vmcore will
be preformed.
Raw partition
Raw partition dumping requires that a disk partition in the system, at least
as large as the amount of memory in the system, be left unformatted. Assuming
/dev/sda5 is left unformatted, kdump.conf can be configured with ‘raw
/dev/sda5′, and the vmcore file will be copied via dd directly onto partition
/dev/sda5. Restart the kdump service via ‘/sbin/service kdump restart’
to commit this change to your kdump initrd.
Dedicated file system
Similar to raw partition dumping, you can format a partition with the file
system of your choice, leaving it unmounted during normal operation. Again,
it should be at least as large as the amount of memory in the system. Assuming
/dev/sda3 has been formatted ext3, specify ‘ext3 /dev/sda3’ in kdump.conf,
and a vmcore file will be copied onto the file system after it has been
mounted. Dumping to a dedicated partition has the advantage that you can dump
multiple vmcores to the file system, space permitting, without overwriting
previous ones, as would be the case in a raw partition setup. Restart the
kdump service via ‘/sbin/service kdump restart’ to commit this change to
your kdump initrd. Note that for local file systems ext3 and ext2 are
supported as dumpable targets. Kdump will not prevent you from specifying
other filesystems, and they will most likely work, but their operation
cannot be guaranteed. for instance specifying a vfat filesystem or msdos
filesystem will result in a successful load of the kdump service, but during
crash recovery, the dump will fail if the system has more than 2GB of memory
(since vfat and msdos filesystems do not support more than 2GB files).
Be careful of your filesystem selection when using this target.
NFS mount
Dumping over NFS requires an NFS server configured to export a file system
with full read/write access for the root user. All operations done within
the kdump initial ramdisk are done as root, and to write out a vmcore file,
we obviously must be able to write to the NFS mount. Configuring an NFS
server is outside the scope of this document, but either the no_root_squash
or anonuid options on the NFS server side are likely of interest to permit
the kdump initrd operations write to the NFS mount as root.
Assuming your’re exporting /dump on the machine nfs-server.example.com,
once the mount is properly configured, specify it in kdump.conf, via ‘net
nfs-server.example.com:/dump’. The server portion can be specified either
by host name or IP address. Following a system crash, the kdump initrd will
mount the NFS mount and copy out the vmcore to your NFS server. Restart the
kdump service via ‘/sbin/service kdump restart’ to commit this change to
your kdump initrd.
Remote system via ssh/scp
Dumping over ssh/scp requires setting up passwordless ssh keys for every
machine you wish to have dump via this method. First up, configure kdump.conf
for ssh/scp dumping, adding a config line of ‘net user@server’, where ‘user’
can be any user on the target system you choose, and ‘server’ is the host
name or IP address of the target system. Using a dedicated, restricted user
account on the target system is recommended, as there will be keyless ssh
access to this account.
Once kdump.conf is appropriately configured, issue the command ‘/sbin/service
kdump propagate’ to automatically set up the ssh host keys and transmit
the necessary bits to the target server. You’ll have to type in ‘yes’
to accept the host key for your targer server if this is the first time
you’ve connected to it, and then input the target system user’s password
to send over the necessary ssh key file. Restart the kdump service via
‘/sbin/service kdump restart’ to commit this change to your kdump initrd.
Path
By default, local file system vmcore files are written to /var/crash/%DATE
on the local system, ssh/scp dumps to /var/crash/%HOST-%DATE on the target
system, dedicated file system partition dumps to ./var/crash/%DATE, and
NFS dumps to ./var/crash/%HOST-%DATE, the latter two both relative to
their respective mount points within the kdump initrd (usually /mnt). The
‘/var/crash’ portion of the path can be overridden using kdump.conf’s ‘path’
variable, should you wish to write the vmcore out to a different location. For
example, ‘path /data/coredumps’ would lead to vmcore files being written to
/data/coredumps/%DATE if you were dumping to your local file system. Note
that the path option is ingnored if your kdump configuration results in the
core being saved from the initscripts in the root filesystem.
Default action
By default, if a configured dump method fails, the kdump initrd falls back
to trying to dump to the local file system (i.e., into the file system(s)
you would have mounted under normal system operation). The system always
reboots following an attempted dump to your local file system, regardless
of success or failure.
However, for any of the advanced methods, if the dump fails, you can configure
the kdump initrd to skip trying to dump to the local file system, either
immediately rebooting (‘default reboot’) or dropping your to a shell within
the initrd (‘default shell’), from which you could try to capture the vmcore
manually. Again, if the ‘default’ parameter is unset, a local file system
dump will be attempted, then the system will reboot.
Compression and filtering
The ‘core_collector’ parameter in kdump.conf allows you to specify a custom
dump capture method. The most common alternate method is makedumpfile, which
is a dump filtering and compression utility provided with kexec-tools. On
some architectures, it can drastically reduce the size of your vmcore files,
which becomes very useful on systems with large amounts of memory.
A typical setup is ‘core_collector makedumpfile -c’, but check the output of
‘/sbin/makedumpfile –help’ for a list of all available options (-i and -g
don’t need to be specified, they’re automatically taken care of). Note that
use of makedumpfile requires that the kernel-debuginfo package corresponding
with your running kernel be installed. Also, note that for technical reasons,
makedumpfile cannot be used with ssh/scp or raw dumps.
Also note that makedumpfile is only used from the initramfs. Saving a
core from the initscript in the root filesystem is considered a last ditch
effort, only used when the initramfs has failed to save the core properly.
As such only the cp utiltiy is used in the initscripts. The implication
here is that in order to use makedumpfile as your core collector, you must
specify a dump target in /etc/kdump.conf.
Caveats:
Console frame-buffers and X are not properly supported. If you typically run
with something along the lines of “vga=791” in your kernel config line or
have 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.
Notes on RHEL5 configuration:
The RHEL5 kexec-utils package contains two extra configuration files:
/etc/sysconfig/kdump
This file allows you to specify an alternate kernel to boot in the
event of a panic (other than the kernel running at the moment), and allows you
to override or append options on the kernel command line. It also alows you
to pass extra options to the kexec utility when the kdump service is starting.
See documentation in the template kdump sysconfig file for exact usage
/etc/kdump.conf
This file allows you to configure how kdump will record your core
file. Unlike the stock version of kdump, the RHEL5 version of kdump attempts
to record your vmcore file from the initramfs, so as to still function
properly in the event that your root file system is corrupted and unmountable.
This file is interrogated on kdump service start and is used to populate the
initramfs for the kdump kernel with the appropriate data and utilities to copy
your core file to the desired location. See documentation in /etc/kdump.conf
for available config directives and targets. Note especially the ifc option.
kdump will attempt to determine which network interface to use when dumping to
a remote server, but due to the possibility of interface renaming, or alternate
module load strategies, the interface name may change in the kdump kernel.
This option is used to override that guess, so that the appropriate interface
will be activated in the kdump kernel.
