Mark an known location in memory after the kernel loads with a special
pattern and some kernel environmental information. Set aside some space
for problems. In a normal reboot clear this area on the way down. In a
panic try and add some information to the reserved area.
In the event of a panic or other problem the area will have the pattern
set. When the pattern is found by the boot loader (i.e. LILO) then a
small handler could be loaded into a portion of the reserved area created
above. This could go poking around based on the information found it has
and copy things out to a swap file or maybe a floppy disk.
This would require a small section of physical ram to be set aside but
with a 32mb system that should not be too much of a problem. Maybe set
aside the top 128KB?
How about fixing RAM disks so they survive reboots (not resets) and dump
to them?
Just some thoughts.
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