On Tue, Jan 18, 2011 at 11:53:41PM -0500, Andy Stewart wrote:
When the boxes freezes, I cannot ssh into the box. I cannot switch to a text console. It is totally stuck, and the caps lock and scroll lock leds are blinking on the keyboard.
Blinking caps lock & sroll lock means there is a kernel panic. Can you set up a serial console or netconsole in advance to capture the panic messages to another system when it crashes? http://www.av8n.com/computer/htm/kernel-lockup.htm http://www.novell.com/communities/node/4753/netconsole-howto-send-kernel-boo...
I haven't tried the Alt-SysRq key sequence yet...I believe that I have to enable that functionality.
in /etc/sysctl.conf: # Controls the System Request debugging functionality of the kernel kernel.sysrq = 1 If you set up a serial console, you should be able to send a break key to access the System Request functionality in the same way but over the serial port.
The trick you mentioned about running tail -f /var/log/messages from another system is a good one that I had not considered! I'll try that also.
I doubt that will work if there is a kernel panic.