KernelTrap: Preserving Oops Data Through Resets

“James Courtier queried the Linux Kernel mailing list on the
feasibility of restoring the kernel ring buffer after a reset. He
proposed simply writing the ring buffer data redundantly to memory
in the hope that not all RAM is erased at boot time, allowing the
buffer to be reconstructed. The kernel ring buffer is typically
viewed with the dmesg command. Referring to the method of
collecting data from an oops through a serial connection, James
explained, ‘the main advantage of something like this would be for
newer motherboards that are around now that don’t have a serial
port.’ An existing solution to this problem is using kexec to boot
a special lightweight kernel after a crash to collect a kernel
crash dump…”

Complete Story