Bug 149018

Summary:	capturing oopses via serial console
Product:	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3	Reporter:	Jure Pečar <pegasus>
Component:	kernel	Assignee:	Ernie Petrides <petrides>
Status:	CLOSED WORKSFORME	QA Contact:	Brian Brock <bbrock>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	3.0	CC:	petrides, riel, shillman
Target Milestone:	---	Keywords:	FutureFeature
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Enhancement
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2005-06-06 23:38:06 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Jure Pečar 2005-02-17 22:45:31 UTC

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Description of problem:
I have all my servers' serial consoles connected to one machine with many serial ports, where I can access them via minicom. I also have watchdog modules configured on servers to autoreboot them in case of problems.

Every now and then some server goes down with an oops. My idea for this serial console setup was simplified oops capturing, but there's a problem: when watchdog reboots the server, bios actually redraws the whole screen, deleting all the oops info. So I was thinking ... Could it be possible to add a simple loop to the oops printing function that would print a number of newlines after the oops info, where number would be taken as a kernel boot line parameter? So that bios would redraw over already blank screen and I could just scroll minicom buffer up to get the oops.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
any kernel

How reproducible:
Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. set up a server with console on serial port and watchdog timer to reboot it
2. make someting to oops it
3. watch the console in minicom and observe bios overwriting oops data
  

Additional info:

I don't know if this can be acomplished with some minicom setting or possibly with using something else than minicom for serial terminal. If it is, I'd like to know how to do it. Afterall, I'd like to see where my machines are oopsing and figure out why.

Comment 1 Suzanne Hillman 2005-02-18 21:51:30 UTC

Internal RFE bug #149115 entered; will be considered for future releases.

Comment 2 Ernie Petrides 2005-03-01 01:22:18 UTC

Hello, Jure.  Could you simply use minicom's "capture" mechanism to log
all of the console output into a file?  To begin capturing, go into the
"Minicom Command Summary" menu with CTRL-A Z, then type L and provide a
file name for logging.

Please let me know if this satisfies your request.  Thanks.

Comment 3 Jure Pečar 2005-03-01 23:28:23 UTC

Thanks for the suggestion.
I've enabled capturing in my minicoms. Will report back with results when new 
oops happens.

Comment 4 Ernie Petrides 2005-06-06 23:38:06 UTC

Closing under the assumption that minicom feature suffices.

Comment 5 Ernie Petrides 2005-10-06 23:47:59 UTC

*** Bug 149115 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***