Server unresponsive, messages shown on console but not in log files

Question

I'm using Ubuntu Server 10.04.4, and once in a while the server hangs (once a month) and is totally unresponsive. The tty is flooded with messages like these. The problem is that these messages are not in my log files after reboot. How to log these messages so that I can analyze them later? In the current logs I can't see anything that would tell me why this is happening.

I would also appreciate if anybody can tell from those messages what's going on. This server is a guest virtual machine. The host server is also Ubuntu server 10.04 with KVM/QEMU.

Gnarfoz · Answer 1 · 2012-07-02T15:01:56.097

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As @coredump (very relevant user name!) pointed out, that's the tail end of a kernel panic. Doubt those are going to be logged anywhere. Maybe you can enable a crash memory dump, I've never done that, though.

Edit: For kernel crash dumps, it seems kdump is currently the way to go.

You can configure the kernel to automatically reboot on panic with echo 10 > /proc/sys/kernel/panic (reboot after 10 seconds on panic), although that obviously doesn't solve the problem. ;-)

edited Jul 02 '12 at 15:01

answered Jun 22 '12 at 19:15

Gnarfoz

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That's actually a nice tip. But as you said, it doesn't solve the problem :) – raistlin majere Jul 02 '12 at 09:26
I added a link to kdump, which should allow you to grab the crash dump. – Gnarfoz Jul 02 '12 at 15:02

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 22 '12 at 19:11

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I don't know if you can save those messages in log. Usually that happens because the kernel broke so badly that it can't even write the messages at that state.

Take a picture/screenshot, is what I do usually.

answered Jun 22 '12 at 19:11

coredump

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Server unresponsive, messages shown on console but not in log files

2 Answers2