Re: [gentoo-user] Kernel crash - howto find out what happened?

["Duane Griffin" <duaneg@dghda.com>]

2008/10/12 Alexander Puchmayr <alexander.puchmayr@linznet.at>:
> MY gentoo system (an amd64@4400+, 2GB ram, nforce4-chipset)
> worked fine for nearly two years, but now it frequently freezes, sometimes
> (not always) scrollock and capslock LED blinking).

If you have another machine lying around, try setting up netconsole
and/or serial console logging. They should catch any dying messages
from your kernel. Blinking LEDs indicates a panic, which means you
should get a message in those cases, at least.

Using serial console is the easiest and most reliable way, but
requires a serial cable. Netconsole just uses ethernet but isn't as
reliable. Take a look at Documentation/serial-console.txt and
Documentation/networking/netconsole.txt under your kernel source
directory for more info.

Cheers,
Duane.

-- 
"I never could learn to drink that blood and call it wine" - Bob Dylan