Dumping

Depending on your dump configuration, a core-dump of a KVM guest can be created on the virtual server or on the KVM host.

Dumps on virtual servers

For dumps on a virtual server, you need a kdump setup for the KVM guest that runs on the virtual server. With kdump in place, a kernel panic automatically creates a dump of the crashed guest. For information about setting up kdump, see Using the Dump Tools.

Dumps on the KVM host

You can use the on_crash element in the domain configuration-XML of the virtual server to set up an automated dump-on-panic. Dumps are then available to the KVM host. For guests with a kdump setup, the on_crash configuration is ignored unless kdump fails.

Regardless of whether kdump is set up for the guest, you can use the virsh dump command to obtain a dump for a virtual server.

You can deliberately induce a crash condition with virsh inject-nmi, for example to test your dump configuration.