Re: Speaker twiddling [was: Re: Panicking in morse code]

[Ville Herva <vherva@niksula.hut.fi>]

On Sat, Jul 27, 2002 at 02:56:41PM -0400, you [Albert D. Cahalan] wrote:
> Reality?
> 
> There's no "set up a microphone and decoder" problem.
> Most people have a tape recorder. Use that, then play
> back into the PC's sound card after you reboot. Post the
> sound file on a web site.

Reality?

I don't have a tape recorder, and even if I had that procedure is so tedious
that I'd rather write the oops down with a pen. And I don't use pen
willingly as it is error prone. (I don't even dare to think what Windows
people would say if I actually found a magnetophone and a mic and tried to
sneak into the curiously twittering server room without anyone noticing.)

Let's get real. There's much better solutions already available: 
 - serial console that has been in kernel for ages
   (sneaking into server room with an old laptop and serial cable
   at least _looks_ professional)
 - kmsgdump from Willy Tarreau that writes the oops to a floppy (even makes
   a msdos fs), can use printer and enables pgup/pgdown even after lockup so
   that you can see the whole kernel ring buffer (who would ever notice if
   you sneak out from the server room with a floppy or a sheet of paper)
   http://wtarreau.free.fr/kmsgdump/
 - netconsole from Ingo Molnar that logs the oops over udp (you don't even
   have to sneak into the server room)
   http://people.redhat.com/mingo/netconsole-patches/

Now, I would assume that most people have a floppy, printer or a network
connection. At least more people than have a tape recorder.


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