cvs commit: src/sys/alpha/alpha support.s src/sys/i386/i386 swtch.s src/sys/kern kern_shutdown.c src/sys/sys systm.h

[Kenneth Culver]

Quoting Nate Lawson <nate at root.org>:

> On Tue, 20 Jan 2004, Mike Silbersack wrote:
> > On Tue, 20 Jan 2004, Bruce Evans wrote:
> > <much deleted>
> > > This can be obtained by running a debugger on the panic dump.  Line
> > > numbers and source file names can also be printed by the debugger
> > > if the executable has at least line numbers in its debugging info.
> >
> > True, if you can convince the reporter to enable crashdumps and recreate
> > the panic... having even roughly accurate line numbers would increase the
> > usefulness of PRs quite a bit.
>
> Except when crashdumps don't work or are 1 GB+.  There are a few things we
> need:
>
> * Fix crash dumps.  I can't get a dump on my laptop, ATA.
>
> * Sparse crash dumps.  We don't need non-anonymous pages, for instance.
>
> * Fix GDB backtrace output (patch posted by gallatin@ and obrien@ may be
> working on integrating it.)
>
> * Fix backtrace() so the output goes to the console log.  Right now, we
> get output that needs to be hand-transcribed or use a serial console.

This is also very useful for when FreeBSD crashes when X is running. If X is
running, the only option is a serial console, as you can't see the crash to
transcribe it otherwise, and most people don't have the spare computer to use
as a serial console.

Ken