NTT Data and VA Linux of Japan have released an open source crash dumping tool for Linux kernels. Mini Kernel Dump is a Linux-based mini-kernel that runs underneath Linux kernels on IA-32 systems (other architectures pending), providing a stable environment for capturing and dumping crash dump data.

According to NTT and VA, determining the cause of faults on Linux systems has been a weakness, because existing tools such as LKCD, netdump, and diskdump run on the very kernel they are monitoring. They also require device drivers.

Mini Kernel Dump uses a small Linux kernel dedicated only to getting dump information. Few modifications to the target kernel are required, and Mini Kernel Dump should work under “any hardware configuration,” the companies say, because no drivers are required.

Currently, Mini Kernel Dump supports IA-32, with X86-64 and IA-64 support planned. It is distributed under the GNU GPL, and the project is hosted on Sourceforge.

 
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