Description of problem: mkdumprd fails with error: "kernel-debuginfo-`uname -r` is not installed. You need this to use makedumpfile!" when trying to use the "core_collector makedumpfile" command in /etc/kdump.conf. kernel-debuginfo package is not shipped with RHEL5. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): RHEL5 Beta 2 How reproducible: always Steps to Reproduce: 1. add "core_collector makedumpfile -c" to /etc/kdump.conf 2. reboot or run /etc/init.d/kdump restart 3. rebuild of kdump ramdisk will fail with above error. Actual results: the core_collector parameter in /etc/kdump.conf does not work (for example to automatically compress core files). Expected results: the core_collector command should be functional without the kernel-debuginfo package installed (or that package should ship with the OS). Additional info:
This behavior is entirely intentional as well as correct when you're using makedumpfile -c as a core_collector. The makedumpfile utility *requires* debuginfo to properly compress vmcores. However, since using makedumpfile isn't a requirement (and in fact isn't possible for some types of dumps), kernel- debuginfo isn't a hard Requires: for the kexec-tools package. The core_collector parameter works just fine if you use something other than makedumpfile (in fact, out of the box, I believe core_collector actually winds up being set to 'cp' behind the scenes). Oh, and kernel-debuginfo *is* available for RHEL5. I can't remember if we were going to ship them on a CD, or they're only available via ftp or what, but they do exist and are (or will be) available.
Yeah, this is notabug. debuginfo packages are required when using makedumpfile, and there is currently no real way around that. IIRC, the debuginfo packages will eventually be available via ftp or RHN.