How to debug crash on laptop with no serial port

[Pete Zaitcev]

On Tue, 03 Feb 2004 11:54:44 +0000
Denis Hennessy <dhennessy at valista.com> wrote:

> I'm trying fedora on an IBM X31 laptop which has no native serial 
> port*.  I've tried various kernels including 2.4.22-1.2135.nptl, 
> 2.4.22-1.2149.nptl and 2.6.1-1.53. After running for somewhere between 3 
> hours and 2 days, the machine will lock up hard. X will freeze and 
> nothing short of a power cycle will get any response. Sometime, the caps 
> lock light will be flashing.

> The only other wierdness (I'm not sure it's related) is that 
> applications will occasionally exit for no reason. [...]

First I should say I'm not too optimistic about it, because
applications dying randomly usually point to a bad SODIMM. So, in the
end, it's not likely a console can help a lot. Both 2.4 and 2.6
crashing tells us something too.

That said, try to set up Ingo's netconsole. At least you should be
able to see the oops when LEDs flash. I do not remember if netconsole
is enabled in Fedora. It might need some rebuilding, but this is what
I would do. Start here:
 http://oss.sgi.com/projects/netdev/archive/2001-09/msg00107.html

Do not go for USB serial console, it's pretty much useless for
cases like this.

Good luck,
-- Pete