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Logging Unexpected Shutdowns/Crashes w/ Linux?
sweede asks: "I have a dedicated server that seems to reboot more often than it should. In Windows 2000/XP (maybe NT4.0?), if your computer or server crashes it will leave an event message in the Event Viewer for you to review on what went wrong. Is it possible to do something similar in Linux? Where a power outage or an unexpected kernel panic will leave a message in /var/log/event (or whatever) Searching Google for 'kernel trapping' doesn't give me a whole lot of info on the subject."
IRIX will core dump to the swap partition. On the next boot it analyzes this core file, which includes various system logs, etc, and saves useful output in /var/adm/crash. You know you've done a good job when the kernel panic causes a panic, called a double panic. I used to be able to trigger those at will. Hrmm, I should test that on the current release.
AIX summarizes the likely causes of failure (power failure, someone pressed the power switch, or power supply died, etc). I've seen (but do not personally use) a similar thing with IRIX that actually assigns a percentage confidence level to its guess.
Of course, usually you know there was a power failure because your UPS told you so.... I did have one case where we had a very brief outage (or maybe just a brownout). Every machine in the building had rebooted.... except one. That RS/6000 had an eerie log message like "power failure detected". And no, it was not on a UPS. I was rather impressed.
Sadly, I don't know how to get any useful information out of linux. And don't give me crap about it never crashing. I can prove otherwise. Too bad I can't figure out why.... Maybe a kernel developer will read this and copy some ideas from the commercial Unix vendors.
If you are adventurous, you could try applying the LKCD patches to your kernel. Start looking here