Re: [ECOS] does ecos support generating core files or kernel crash dumps?

[Gary Thomas <gary@mlbassoc.com>]

On Wed, 2003-10-15 at 14:37, Adrian Caceres wrote:
> Many embedded systems have  a local/ide type bus
> to a flash.  Assuming the basic driver to such interface was not affected
> by the crash, it would be possible to write a dump to it.
> Or there might be some storage available across some network
> interface.  The embedded system
> could send the crash dump over to the other end for storage.
> 
> Having gdb support is great for development, but when it comes
> to beta,  a core dump can be more useful.  It is not rare for
> a specific problem to only occur at some beta site and there
> is simply no way to gdb to it.  The serial port might not even
> be stuffed or accesible in these units.  But give them a unit
> with an extra large flash, wait for the problem to happen again,
> get the unit back,  and now you might have all the information you need.
> If the embedded device already has a removable flash such
> as a digital or video camera,  the process is simply a swap of
> a flash.
> 

These are wonderful arguments (I made the same ones more than 25
years ago to my boss at the time...).  The infrastructure is all
there for you to add such a capability, it's just not something
that has ever been done before.

As for your first statement about having a local IDE bus with
FLASH - that's probably less than 2% of all of the systems that
eCos is normally deployed on, but if you've got it, flaunt it!

> - adrian
> 
> Gary Thomas wrote:
> 
> >On Wed, 2003-10-15 at 11:28, Adrian Caceres wrote:
> >  
> >
> >>I am wondering if ecos already supports generating core files or crash
> >>dumps for post-mortem analysis using gdb.
> >>    
> >>
> >
> >No.  Where would you put them [in an embedded system]?
> >
> >If the application "crashes", just connect to it using GDB
> >and figure out why.
> >
> >  
> >
-- 
Gary Thomas <gary@mlbassoc.com>
MLB Associates


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