[Crash-utility] crash failing with CentOS 5 under VMware

[Brian Reichert]

I'm trying to explore crash dumps under these conditions:

- VMware workstation 7.1.5 build-491717
- CentOS 5.7 +updates, as of today
- kernel 2.6.18-274.17.1.el5 x86
- crash 6.0.2

I've sucessfully enabled kdump to generate crash dumps, but the
'crash' utility can neither find the vmlinux image for the live
system, nor match the crash dump with the vmlinux image I direct
it to.

Misc RPMs installed:

  [root at 172-20-1-25 modules]# uname -r; rpm -qa | grep kernel
  2.6.18-274.17.1.el5
  kernel-2.6.18-274.17.1.el5
  kernel-debug-2.6.18-274.17.1.el5
  kernel-debuginfo-2.6.18-274.17.1.el5.centos.plus
  kernel-debuginfo-common-2.6.18-274.17.1.el5.centos.plus
  kernel-devel-2.6.18-274.17.1.el5

Here are various invocations I've attempted; can anyone suggest what's
causing these failures, and how to work around them?

Please let me know if there are any details I can provide to assist.

Additional notes:

- I've tries both crashkernel=64M at 16M and crashkernel=128M at 16M as
  kernel arguments, with the same results.

- I've attempted a symlink to match the debug modules directly to
  the name of the kernel, but that didn't change the results:
  2.6.18-274.17.1.el5.centos.plus -> 2.6.18-274.17.1.el5

-------------------------------
Against the live system:

  [root at 172-20-1-25 modules]# crash

  crash 6.0.2
  [...]
   
   crash: cannot find booted kernel -- please enter namelist argument

-------------------------------
Against the vmlinux file supplied by the kernel-debuginfo RPM:

  [root at 172-20-1-25 modules]# crash /usr/lib/debug/lib/modules/2.6.18-274.17.1.el5.centos.plus/vmlinux

  crash 6.0.2
  [...]

  WARNING: /usr/lib/debug/lib/modules/2.6.18-274.17.1.el5.centos.plus/vmlinux
           and /proc/version do not match!

  WARNING: /proc/version indicates kernel version: 2.6.18-274.17.1.el5

  crash: please use the vmlinux file for that kernel version, or try using
         the System.map for that kernel version as an additional argument.

-------------------------------
Against my crash dump:

  [root at 172-20-1-25 modules]# crash /usr/lib/debug/lib/modules/2.6.18-274.17.1.el5.centos.plus/vmlinux /home/crash/127.0.0.1-2012-01-26-19\:19\:19/vmcore 

  crash 6.0.2
  [...]

  crash: cannot determine base kernel version
  WARNING: cannot read linux_banner string
  crash: /usr/lib/debug/lib/modules/2.6.18-274.17.1.el5.centos.plus/vmlinux and /home/crash/127.0.0.1-2012-01-26-19:19:19/vmcore do not match!

-- 
Brian Reichert				<reichert at numachi.com>
BSD admin/developer at large