Re: The stability crisis

Aaron J. Grier (agrier@poofy.goof.com)
Thu, 1 Jul 1999 14:41:38 -0700


On Thu, Jul 01, 1999 at 05:20:36PM -0400, Anthony Barbachan wrote:

> How about dumping to the swap partition along with a special sequence of
> bytes used as a flag. This way when the machine is brought back up the
> kernel can then use that special sequence of bytes along with the debug data
> to generate a bug report.

Although I kind of like this "feature," if your OS is wigging out, there
are no guarantees that you're actually writing data to the swap partition.
Especially if it's a driver problem, you might end up writing junk to
your root partition, blowing away your parition table, or worse.

I do think something like this would be nice to have as an _option_ for
the adventurous. I certainly find it useful from time to time on my
NetBSD boxes.

----
Aaron J. Grier | "Not your ordinary poofy goof." | agrier@poofy.goof.com
"I hear that if you win, you get a free probe by aliens."
-- Bill Coldwell, regarding the SETI@home project

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