Would like to re-consider a fix for this in Fedora to make life easier to debug kdump failures without serial console. +++ This bug was initially created as a clone of Bug #522925 +++ Description of problem: After setting up kdump, if the kernel crashes while the user is operating under X Window, there is no indication of the kdump kernel is in progress. The user would be confused to see if this is a kernel failure or frozen X window. Ideally, the display would switch to the console when the kdump kernel is booting. This problem happens with and without KMS. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): kernel-2.6.31-2.fc12.x86_64 xorg-x11-drv-ati-6.12.2-19.fc12.x86_64 How reproducible: always Steps to Reproduce: 1. setup kdump. 2. trigger kernel crash (echo c >/proc/sysrq-trigger) from X Window. Actual results: No indication of the kdump kernel in progress. Just a frozen X window. Expected results: Switch to console to show the kdump kernel is booting. --- Additional comment from triage.org on 2009-11-16 07:18:21 EST --- This bug appears to have been reported against 'rawhide' during the Fedora 12 development cycle. Changing version to '12'. More information and reason for this action is here: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/HouseKeeping --- Additional comment from nhorman on 2010-05-17 08:40:17 EDT --- This has been a long standing problem, one which we just can't fix right now. During a crash there is currently no safe way to return a video card to text mode so that the kdump boot process is visible, or to put up a banner indicating that a kdump is in progress. The KMS changes make some of this more possible, but only on certain hardware, and under certain conditions. Its simply to haphazzard a solution to truly be reasonable at this point.
(just fixing up a bunch of incorrect settings) I'm pretty sure Neil's comment still stands. Adam, Dave, do you have any thoughts on how to possibly reinit the video cards in the kdump kernel?
Given that most devices support/use KMS, is this still an issue? If yes which cards are remaining?
On this Intel card Fedora 12 laptop (pretty sure KMS is enabled), if echo c >/proc/sysrq-trigger while in X Window, the screen will be frozen without being able to see the kernel panic stack traces.
(In reply to CAI Qian from comment #3) > On this Intel card Fedora 12 laptop (pretty sure KMS is enabled), Correction, Fedora 21.