28.4.5. Configuring ABRT to Detect a Kernel Panic
With Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.3, ABRT can detect a kernel panic using the
abrt-vmcore service, which is provided by the abrt-addon-vmcore package. The service starts automatically on system boot and searches for a core dump file in the /var/crash/ directory. If a core dump file is found, abrt-vmcore creates the problem data directory in the /var/spool/abrt/ directory and moves the core dump file to the newly created problem data directory. After the /var/crash/ directory is searched through, the service is stopped until the next system boot.
To configure ABRT to detect a kernel panic, perform the following steps:
- Ensure that the
kdumpservice is enabled on the system. Especially, the amount of memory that is reserved for the kdump kernel has to be set correctly. You can set it by using the system-config-kdump graphical tool, or by specifying thecrashkernelparameter in the list of kernel options in the/etc/grub.confconfiguration file. See Chapter 32, The kdump Crash Recovery Service for details on how to enable and configurekdump. - Install the abrt-addon-vmcore package using the Yum package installer:
~]#
yum install abrt-addon-vmcoreThis installs theabrt-vmcoreservice with respective support and configuration files. Please note that the abrt-addon-vmcore package is provided by the Optional subscription channel. See Section 8.4.8, “Adding the Optional and Supplementary Repositories” for more information on Red Hat additional channels. - Reboot the system for the changes to take effect.
Unless ABRT is configured differently, problem data for any detected kernel panic is now stored in the
/var/spool/abrt/ directory and can be further processed by ABRT just as any other detected kernel oops.
