Under Linux you can use Kdump to reliably capture the state of the system at the time of an OOPS ( kernel crash ) . Does Kdump work the same when the kernel is running under VMWare? I'm using VmWare Server 2.0.
Why wouldn't it? Don't know, but I've seen plenty of things that I thought should work, and then I spent an ton of time trying to get them to work only to find some subtle reason why they can't work. Have you actually run kdump under vmware yourself?
Robert S. Barnes
2009-10-30 07:33:08
+1
A:
I don't know if kdump will work. Last time I tried kexec in VMware it would bomb and lock up the VM. I guess there is a possibility kdump and/or kexec could work with the right settings but I didn't play with it much.
I'm not sure what you're trying to do but VMware does provide the ability to connect gdb to a Linux guest from the host machine. Or at least it did, it has been a long time since I tried it but it worked when I was debugging a kernel module.
I just looked in the VMware knowledge base and couldn't find any new information. This is the old post I got my information from. Also the VMware forum for this type of debugging. I haven't really been paying to attention to what the current status is.
CR
2009-11-03 17:13:37
+1: How long ago did you try this? I was thinking about using VMWares ability to directly pass through USB traffic to the guest for developing a usb driver for a remote control I have.
Robert S. Barnes
2009-11-04 11:44:23
Actually it had been more than a year. I just tried an Ubuntu Karmic guest in Workstation 7 and kexec seems to work fine. I don't know about kdump but I imagine it works also. Kinda cool actually, wouldn't hurt to try it out, it's just a VM.
CR
2009-11-04 13:05:29
Cool. I assume that if it works in Workstation 7 it would probably work in Server 2.0? Did you use the method in your above answer to set it up?
Robert S. Barnes
2009-11-09 09:18:29