Reporting Installation Kernel Panics on New Boxes

[IronForge]

Greetings,

I've a new Laptop with a new Processor (Intel); and am running into Kernel Panics Failures during installations.

I'm no kernel debugger, so "ddb>" commands are a bit foreign to me. I have downloaded a few man pages on it; but my questions are:

Q1: Since the Laptop is "non-functional" due to the kernel panic (presuming sendbug doesn't work, since it kicked me out to the ddb prompt), how do I get the "trace" and "ps" outputs to bugs@openbsd.org?

Q1A: Is it, "copy on paper by hand, and send the email on another OS"?

Thanks.

[IronForge]

Greetings:

I've contacted bugs@openbsd.org... From what I can tell, getting the dmesg is pretty ideal for a panicking machine.

I understand the FAQs at openbsd.org address means of recording dmesg; and one bugs administrator commented that an USB Section may be appropriate.

I took a gander at the install disc; and I noticed all the xx0x entities on /dev. Since it can read attached devices (one external USB Flash Drive as "sd1") - is there a way we can mount a usb drive to save dmesg to (e.g, a .txt file per the FAQ example for the floppy)?

I'll need someone with a good grasp of mountpoints to help me out here - I keep getting "device not configured" whenever I try to copy over, mkdir, etc. an sd1x entity and mount the sd1 on the install disc's /dev directory

Pardon the ignorance; but I'm a front end guy, not a Sysadmin ^_^ Handwriting panic, trace, and ps was my good deed of the day...ROTFL!

[shep]

I understand the FAQs at openbsd.org address means of recording dmesg; and one bugs administrator commented that an USB Section may be appropriate.

I am not sure what you mean by this but I believe that advice from bugs@openbsd.org was to save the dmesg to a usb thumb drive. If enough of the Operating system loaded you should see the thumb drive show up in the dmesg. If you have one sata hard drive it typically is /dev/sd0 and your usb thumb drive then is the second one recognized as /dev/sd1.

If the usb thumb drive is msdos (aka vfat in linux) then you mount it as

mount -t msdos /dev/sd1i /mnt

Once mounted copy your dmesg to /mnt

dmesg > /mnt/dmesg.txt

Sometimes the hardware is so foreign to OpenBSD that the only way to capture the dmesg is use a serial cable as described here

[IronForge]

Thanks, Shep.

The "extra' USB drive was read by the install disc as "sd1"; but there are no sd1x identifiers - only xxx0x identifiers on the install disc.

I know - occicat might not like my approach; and may pounce on this thread; but I'm reading FAQ-14, fdisk, mount, and disklabel right now. From the hip, reading and multitasking (non PC chores), I can see that mounting the device by name or using disklabel may be a factor.

I'm using a Linux LiveCD in the meanwhile; and have contemplated using a similar function so I can get this over to bugs@openbsd.org

Again, thanks.

[J65nko]

You did not mention which version of OpenBSD you tried to install. If it was the 5.2 release you could try to install a 5.3 snapshot:

       98596 Apr  4 10:33 INSTALL.i386
       22581 Apr  4 10:33 INSTALL.linux
        2075 Apr  4 10:34 SHA256
    56418201 Apr  4 10:33 base53.tgz
     9595838 Apr  4 10:33 bsd
     9623641 Apr  4 10:33 bsd.mp
     6494632 Apr  4 10:33 bsd.rd
     6639616 Apr  4 10:33 cd53.iso
       70868 Apr  4 10:33 cdboot
        2048 Apr  4 10:33 cdbr
     3012608 Apr  4 10:33 cdemu53.iso
    46063494 Apr  4 10:33 comp53.tgz
      523640 Apr  4 10:33 etc53.tgz
     1474560 Apr  4 10:33 floppy53.fs
     1474560 Apr  4 10:33 floppyB53.fs
     1474560 Apr  4 10:33 floppyC53.fs
     2629519 Apr  4 10:33 game53.tgz
        1607 Apr  4 10:34 index.txt
   223625216 Apr  4 10:34 install53.iso
     9984457 Apr  4 10:34 man53.tgz
       78952 Apr  4 10:34 pxeboot
    10735567 Apr  1 08:01 xbase53.tgz
       64833 Apr  1 08:01 xetc53.tgz
    39801283 Apr  1 08:01 xfont53.tgz
    26952303 Apr  1 08:01 xserv53.tgz
     4479364 Apr  1 08:01 xshare53.tgz

[jggimi]

The /dev nodes are NOT ALL PRESENT at boot time, as they consume ramdisk filesystem space. There's only a few hundred KB of free space available in a typical bsd.rd filesystem.

# cd /dev
# sh MAKEDEV sd1
# mount /dev/sd1i /mnt
# dmseg > /mnt/dmesg.txt
# umount /mnt

[IronForge]

Thank you all.

J65nko: It was version 5.3

Per jggimi's instructions, I was able to run dmesg and attach it as a .txt file to bugs.

Well, I hope they can incorporate the Laptop - I volunteered my laptop to assist in the effort, so I look forward to see this working on the new platforms.

Again, thanks.