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Chapter 8 Monitoring Your System 179
Setting Up a Core Dump Client
A core dump client sends its kernel panic debug information to the core dump server
address specied in its NVRAM settings.
The information is transmitted at the time of the panic, so before restarting the
computer, allow some time for the data to be sent to the server. The time necessary
depends on the le size of the core dump and the speed of the network connection
between the client and server.
For clients using v10.5 or earlier, see
developer.apple.com/technotes/tn2004/tn2118.html.
Setting up a core dump client:
1 Modify the “boot-args” NVRAM variable to include the “debug” ag 0x0400, and the
“_panicd_ip” ag with the IP address of the core dump server.
The following example uses the core dump server IP address 192.168.1.250. Substitute
the IP address of your own core dump server.
sudo nvram boot-args="debug=0x0400 _panicd_ip=192.168.1.250"
Important: You can reset the boot-args NVRAM variable whenever you install new
system software, including software updates, and when you change the startup disk
using System Preferences.
2 If the core dump client is running Mac OS X Server, modify the watchdogtimerd
behavior to either keep it from restarting the server before the core dump is complete,
or modify the amount of time it waits before restarting the server.
To disable automatic restarting, turn o the “Restart automatically after a power failure”
option in the Options tab of the Energy Saver System Preferences pane.
To increase the amount of time before automatic restarting, add a “count” program
argument larger than 6 (but smaller than 480) to the watchdogtimerd conguration
le at /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.watchdogtimerd.plist.
For more information about the arguments and options, see the watchdogtimerd(8)
man page.
3 Restart the computer for the settings to take eect.
For additional NVRAM debug ags that are useful in core dump debugging,
see Developer Technical Note #2118, subsection “Debug Flags in Depth,”at
developer.apple.com/technotes/tn2004/tn2118.html