*BSD News Article 81664


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From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: crash boot disks - I did it - now for some tuning...
Date: 25 Oct 1996 08:41:25 GMT
Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden
Lines: 31
Message-ID: <54pufl$897@uriah.heep.sax.de>
References: <540mdt$hsl@snoopy.microtronic.de> <5496at$c8@uriah.heep.sax.de>
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Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch)
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us@microtronic.de (Ulf Schmidt) wrote:

> >Try a DDB kernel, this gives you the added feature of a `ps' command
> >inside DDB.  Perhaps this might get you further.

> hate to ask, but: What is a DDB kernel, and how do I create it?

``options DDB'' in your kernel config file.  It includes the online
kernel debugger.  See the handbook section about kernel debugging and
the man page ddb(4) for usage instructions.

The purpose for you will be that you can hit Ctrl-Alt-ESC (or is it
Ctrl-ScrLk in syscons? dunno), and it will yank you to the debugger
prompt.  From there, you can issue commands like `ps' to see what's
happening, or `trace' to see the stack.

> I can now create a backup using tar off a running system, and can
> restore it complete with 3 disks and the backup-tar somewhere on the
> local network.

Be careful with tar.  It's been causing serious troubles for us in
some situation (where the exact details have not been reproducible
afterwards), in particular when used with a umask != 0.  dump and
restore are _way_ better in this respect.

-- 
cheers, J"org

joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)