I was thinking about deploying kdb in all of our major projects. The systems
already all have a serial console, and their operation is fairly critical.
Now, before someone kills me for suggesting that I want to deploy a debugging
patch in critical operations ;), that also means that we can track down bugs
which occur as efficient as possible.
If we find a bug and then switch to a debugging kernel on that box, we all
know what happens: first, we will not be able to reproduce the crash with the
debugging kernel, second, it will take ages for this to occur and occur on
some other box which is not running the debugging kernel yet, and third, this
also means an additional down time for switching to the debugging kernel (and
also the 2nd crash which we basically wait for even).
Now, in general having an extended debug utility on the serial console appears
like a real good idea. But I am not sure whether having kdb running in
"standby" affects performance much if it is not used or if there are any
additional caveats we may run into.
Does it interfere with a getty running on the serial console?
The default command sequence ^A appears to be a real bad choice, since it
means "move to beginning of line" in quite a few programs, and is already used
as a command sequence in minicom and screen, both very useful programs if
running on a serial console. I assume this can be changed easily?
Sincerely,
Lars Marowsky-Brée
-- Lars Marowsky-Brée Network Managementteuto.net Netzdienste GmbH - DPN Verbund-Partner
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