Best of the Newsgroups: panic dump analysis

If this isn't exactly what you wanted, please try our Search (there's a LOT of techy and non-techy stuff here about Linux, Unix, Mac OS X and just computers in general!):

From: Bela Lubkin <belal@sco.com>
Subject: Re: SCO OSR5.0.6 System Crashed during LoneTAR Verify
Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2003 00:51:15 GMT
References: <Pine.UW2.4.21.0306141804390.10951-100000@ris7.UniXpress.com> <bcgbo0$n1l$1@pcls4.std.com> 

Tony Lawrence wrote:

> Lucky Leavell <scomisc@unixpress.com> wrote:
> 
> >One excellent reason to go this route is the thought of having a novice
> >try to write down all those registers and hex contents without making a
> >mistake, not to mention the time required while their users are breathing
> >down their neck.  (I am nearly an hour away so I can't just pop over
> >myself.)
> 
> Well, as I said, most of the time it's hardware and the analysis is
> not going to help you a lot.  There's also the issue of time: ripping
> out ram is quick, simple and cheap.. it may not be the issue at all,
> but it's easy to do.  Other things like nics are easy too.  It's 
> also often easy enough to pop the drives into a whole other box.

I guess we have very different ideas of what is easy.  Running a couple
of commands and posting the resulting text on USENET is easy, to me.
Scheduling some down time, (possibly driving or flying across the
country to the problem system), getting everyone off the system,
shutting down, swapping out bits of hardware, bringing it back up, then
waiting days or weeks to see whether an intermittent panic has stopped
-- that's not easy.

> But we all approach things with the tools and skills we feel most
> confident in.  One of the things we seldom see here is examples of
> tracing panics and the diagnosis.  If I remember, Bela might have
> blessed us with something like that once or twice, and I probably
> saved it at my site, but we sure don't see much of that.  That,
> I think, lends weight to my argument that it's a confusing swamp
> for most of us and that few have gotten useful results.

It's only a made-up number, but I would estimate that I have helped
solve about 100 different problems by way of analyzing panic stack
traces posted on USENET.  Perhaps your internal counter of these doesn't
increment because your eyes glaze over when the discussion goes in that
direction.

dejagoogle search for "panic group:comp.unix.sco.misc author:bela" finds
300+ articles.

Without going back to analyze those articles in detail, I am simply
stating from _my_ experience that a symbolic trace of the panic is _very
useful_ in a large proportion of panic cases.  By "large proportion" I
mean something more than 20% and less than 80% -- I can't be more
accurate than that without going off to do a bunch of analysis which
would be a waste of time.  Even if it is only 20% likely to help, it is
still totally worth the poster's while to obtain and post a stack trace.

Heck, even knowing the operating system version number is probably only
_really_ needed about 20% of the time, but we _all_ whine if a poster
doesn't include that...

>Bela<

SpamCheetah
Stop spam dead in its tracks!

Jump to Comments

Many of the products and books I review are things I purchased for my own use. Some were given to me specifically for the purpose of reviewing them. I resell or can earn commissions from the sale of some of these items. Links within these pages may be affiliate links that pay me for referring you to them. That's mostly insignificant amounts of money; whenever it is not I have made my relationship plain. I also may own stock in companies mentioned here. If you have any question, please do feel free to contact me.

Specific links that take you to pages that allow you to purchase the item I reviewed are very likely to pay me a commission. Many of the books I review were given to me by the publishers specifically for the purpose of writing a review. These gifts and referral fees do not affect my opinions; I often give bad reviews anyway.

We use Google third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our website. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, click here.