linuxsysconfig » other

Kernel crashes explained

admin — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 15:54:11 +0000

Kernel failures, crashes, panics and oopses? Do these sound familiar to you? If not you may want to read dedoimedo’s Linux Kernel Crash Book. It is a step-by-step guide to introduce you to kernel crashes and crash analysis, written with simplicity in mind, accessible even to Linux beginners.

You’ll learn about two kernel crash tools:

LKCD (Linux Kernel Crash Dump)

limitations: unable to save memory dumps to local md RAID devices, netdump server must be on the same subnet

Kdump

advantages: ia64, ppc64 arch support, sends dumps to a wide range of devices and network shares (NFS, CIFS, FTP, SSH)

The next two chapters describe the crash data collection process and the actual data analysis that is performed to investigate the cause of the crash:

Crash Collection

crash setup and running the crash utility

Crash Analysis

analyzing the crash reports (backtrace)

You’ll also learn how to:

trigger a kernel dump by forcing a kernel panic

echo 1 > /proc/sys/kernel/sysrq ; echo c > /proc/sysrq-trigger

send memory dumps to a remote machine (netdump server)

compile a kernel module and use it to create a kernel panic.

Enjoy your reading and don’t forget that submitting kernel crash reports is very important for the developers, as the author points out:

When your kernel crashes, you may want to take the initiative and submit the report to the vendor, so that they may examine it and possibly fix a bug. This is a very important thing. You will not only be helping yourself but possibly everyone using Linux anywhere. What more, kernel crashes are valuable. If there’s a bug somewhere, the developers will find it and fix it.

You can get the book from dedoimedo.com.

PCLinuxOS Magazine – August issue

admin — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 07:07:38 +0000

I’m not sure how many of you still read magazines, but I do it on occasion. I read this month’s issue of the PCLinuxOS magazine and I found some really interesting articles such as the video encoding tutorial and the XFCE customization.

You can download the magazine or browse it online.

What’s the fuss about the new Ubuntu font?

admin — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 14:59:07 +0000

Cannonical Design announced new fonts that will available in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Merrkat. Then, they said the fonts will be made public on August 8th. Meanwhile, the Kubuntu-users mailing list gives notice that members of the ~kubuntu-users team on launchpad can now test the Ubuntu font which is currently in beta.

Ubuntu users go crazy. They create Launchpad accounts just to get access to this new font before August 8th.

Why?

Beats me. Yes, it is a nice font, I can admit that, but it’s just a font, isn’t it?

You can find more details here.

Limited time offer from Codeweavers!!!!!!111

admin — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 13:49:15 +0000

A few days ago (June 30th) I received an email from CodeWeavers announcing a limited time offer to purchase one of their products. The problem was the offer had already expired since it was only available until June 5th. This could be a mistake I guess, so if anybody wants to buy CrossOver at a “ridiculous low” 60% discounted rate, please post a comment and I’ll send you the “special deal code”.

Please note this only applies to CrossOver for Mac.

Also note that I haven’t changed my opinion about CrossOver, I find PlayOnLinux a much better product. It supports Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer, a long list of games and it’s free. What else would you need?

Linux FAQ on Google

admin — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 08:00:39 +0000

Although Linux is a mature OS now (15+ years old) people are still wondering what’s it like or how good is it. As I said in a previous post I don’t think Linux is for everyone. It sure isn’t for those people that ask stupid questions an Google, looking for a quick answer.

Let’s do a little comparison.

See any differences between the 2 images?

Me neither.

Amarok Lyricwiki

admin — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 07:44:27 +0000

No comment…

Sysadmin Appreciation day

admin — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 14:53:31 +0000

Yes, I know there are numerous jokes and so called guides about system administrators that circulate all over the Internet. But today, Friday, July 31, we must make an exception as it’s their Appreciation Day.

So please join me in letting them know we are all aware of their efforts and we apologize for those (364) days when we make their lives a living hell.

Crossover Linux? No thanks!

admin — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 13:56:49 +0000

As you all know Crossover Linux 8.0 was announced a few days ago. New and “exciting” features such as IE7 and Outlook 2007 support are presented as “major development” by the company’s CEO.

Sorry, but I have to strongly disagree. Come one, IE7? Not even IE8? And what’s with the poor gaming support? Counterstrike and Civilization IV? Is that all you can? Oh wait… There’s more, but most of them don’t work!

So why would someone pay for your product? To support wine? I’d agree with that, wine is a great project (being free and all) but that’s about it. It doesn’t run all Windows applications so why use it? I don’t need headaches and frustration, I have that already, so I prefer dual booting or using virtualization. I don’t want to have a native Windows environment on my machine. Wait…that is the actual Crossover goal??

Oh well…Here’s a screenshot with a successful IE7 installation. You won’t see that title for your favourite game.

redhat.com – 2nd round

admin — Tue, 19 May 2009 16:16:05 +0000

Read my other post first. At that time, I was the only one having trouble seeing the logo correctly. And I thought it was a compatibility issue with Firefox. Now it looks even worse. Apparently they’re trying to fix it as the page displayed a “Page not available” warning once or twice. How hard could it be?

As I said the page looks horrible. You can barely see the left menu, not to mention the logo which looks awful. Tried it on Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 (Fedora 11 Preview 64-bit), Firefox 2.0.0.19 (Fedora 8 64-bit), Firefox 2.0.0.20 (Windows XP), Internet Explorer 6 running using IEs4Linux and finally Opera 9.64 (Fedora 11 64-bit).

The page doesn’t look professional and that can’t be good for business.

Update

The issue only appears when accessing the page using http so here’s the required link: http://www.redhat.com/rhel/.

Fedora 11 coming closer

admin — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 18:06:29 +0000

Just a quick reminder: Fedora 11 Beta is due tomorrow, March 31th (one week later than the initial schedule). The feature list is almost 100% completed and I must say I’m impressed with it so far (I’m running Rawhide as I said before).

Here’s two more screenshots:

Enjoy and stay tuned for the release announcement tomorrow.

Update

It’s out! The official announcement says it all:

At the end of May 2009, the next release of this groundbreaking distribution, Fedora 11 — codename “Leonidas” — will be available, with a feature list that dwarfs any previous release.

Do you want to see the future of Linux? It’s here today. Download Fedora 11 Beta and take it for a spin.

Rawhide users will need to update ~ 450 packages.