For debugging you may try to use kdump:

https://access.redhat.com/site/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html/Deployment_Guide/ch-kdump.html

On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 12:52 PM, SCHAER Frederic <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Hi,
>
>
>
> This is not the first time it happens for us, and it again happened
> yesterday : we rebooted our SL6 machines into a new kernel
> (2.6.32-431.17.1.el6.x86_64), and *bam*, one of them got into kernel panic.
>
> Rebooting into the previous kernel works fine.
>
>
>
> Last time this happened, this was on a virtual machine (which is the exact
> same VM as many other VMs which were fine, running SL6.5) : I uninstalled
> the kernel, reinstalled it, rebooted : kernel panic.
>
> I zeroes the kernel files in /boot, suspecting there was something weird
> with the filesystem, ran fsck, removed the kernel, reinstalled : kernel
> panic.
>
> On that specific VM, I ended giving up on that kernel, and it appears that
> it is finally happily booting on latest kernel 2.6.32-431.17.1.el6.x86_64
> even if we did not fix the previous issue… ??
>
>
>
> This time, this is another physical machine (SL 6.3) which went into kernel
> panic, and since it’s a core storage machine I did not have time to run as
> many tests as with the VM or as when this previously appeared.
>
> I remember this already happened on SL5, and reinstalling “solved” the
> issue…
>
>
>
> I’m wondering if others are facing this strange erratic behavior, and would
> have ideas for debugging it ?
>
> For us, it appears this was one host  failing for 359 working…
>
>
>
> Thanks && regards
>
> Frederic