Merge with 2.3.27.

1 files changed, 31 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/oops-tracing.txt b/Documentation/oops-tracing.txt
index 9673a46e7..4263c68d5 100644
--- a/Documentation/oops-tracing.txt
+++ b/Documentation/oops-tracing.txt
@@ -16,6 +16,37 @@ If you are totally stumped as to whom to send the report, send it to
 linux-kernel@vger.rutgers.edu. Thanks for your help in making Linux as
 stable as humanly possible.
 
+Where is the_oops.txt?
+----------------------
+
+Normally the Oops text is read from the kernel buffers by klogd and
+handed to syslogd which writes it to a syslog file, typically
+/var/log/messages (depends on /etc/syslog.conf).  Sometimes klogd dies,
+in which case you can run dmesg > file to read the data from the kernel
+buffers and save it.  Or you can cat /proc/kmsg > file, however you
+have to break in to stop the transfer, kmsg is a "never ending file".
+If the machine has crashed so badly that you cannot enter commands or
+the disk is not available then you have three options :-
+
+(1) Hand copy the text from the screen and type it in after the machine
+    has restarted.  Messy but it is the only option if you have not
+    planned for a crash.
+
+(2) Boot with a serial console (see Documentation/serial-console.txt),
+    run a null modem to a second machine and capture the output there
+    using your favourite communication program.  Minicom works well.
+
+(3) Patch the kernel with one of the crash dump patches.  These save
+    data to a floppy disk or video rom or a swap partition.  None of
+    these are standard kernel patches so you have to find and apply
+    them yourself.  Search kernel archives for kmsgdump, lkcd and
+    oops+smram.
+
+No matter how you capture the log output, feed the resulting file to
+ksymoops along with /proc/ksyms and /proc/modules that applied at the
+time of the crash.  /var/log/ksymoops can be useful to capture the
+latter, man ksymoops for details.
+
 
 Full Information
 ----------------