On 24/06/07 18:03, Keith Lofstrom wrote:
> I am getting frequent crashes on my SL5 laptop;  the only data I
> have is that a couple of indicator lights are flashing.  Such
> crashes were rare with SL4.4 before I converted the machine. 

If the "indicator lights" are the keyboard LEDs (e.g. CapsLock), these
would indicate a kernel panic (if you read Morse, you might even
understand what caused the crash just from these lights. No joke.

Once the kernel has panic'ed, no further I/O will occur, so nothing will
get logged to disk (this is to prevent a runaway kernel from randomly
overwriting your data - i.e. a good thing). The kernel will also no
longer handle keyboard requests. On the other hand, the kernel will try
to dump a (more or less helpful) backtrace and a one-line summary to the
console. This usually allows to at least point fingers as to what
subsystem might be broken.

You might nt to check /var/log/messages just in case, sometimes the
kernel gives several warning messages (Oops:..) before keeling over
terminally.

> Sometimes, the crashes are while I am using the laptop, but more
> often they occur between 1 and 4 am (most of my cron.daily jobs
> kick off at 4am).  Often, the machine is logged in with a few
> browser windows up and apps windows open.
> 
> What can I do to log the crashes, so I can tell the state of
> the machine and see what is running when the crash occurs?

Since you are running a X11 session, you don't see the console directly,
and since the kernel no longer handles input, you cannot switch to it
after the panic.

I would suggest to simply switch to a virtual text console (Ctrl-Alt-F1)
before you leave - if the kernel panic's overnight, you will see the
error message on the text console this way. Use Ctrl-Alt-F7 to get back
at your X11 session in the morning, in case the machine survived...


If you'd like to dig deeper, you might need to set up a serial console,
and log the data on the remote end, or set up kdump/kexec in oder to
capture a full crash dump (see TUV:
http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/FAQ_105_9036.shtm).

Regards
Jan