Setting up kdump

Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® provides several ways of setting up kdump.

About this task

You can choose between the following methods of setting up kdump:
  • The Kernel Dump Configuration utility system-config-kdump: Graphical tool with more configuration options. For a configuration example, see the chapter about configuring kdump in the graphical user interface in the Managing, monitoring and updating the kernel on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5.
  • Manually using configuration files such as /etc/kdump.conf: For a configuration example, see the chapter on kdump in the Managing, monitoring and updating the kernel on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5.
  • The crashkernel boot parameter: For systems with more than 4 GB of memory the configuration crashkernel=auto enables kdump by default. For smaller systems you must explicitly define the crashkernel parameter in /etc/zipl.conf, for example: crashkernel=192M. For details, see the chapter on kdump in the Managing, monitoring and updating the kernel on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5.
z/VM: For z/VM® guests, any DCSSs and their corresponding storage gaps must not overlap with the storage area 0 - <crashkernel_size>.

What to do next

As a backup, you can set up a stand-alone dump tool in addition to kdump. See dumpconf - Configure panic or PSW restart action about how to run a backup tool automatically, if kdump fails.