# Unstable system, I use Watchdogd but get not crashdumps



## tty23 (Feb 13, 2010)

Hi,

I recently installed FreeBSD 8 on my former Linux server.
The system does fileserving, hosting my git repository and
running a ejabberd server.
At first I ran it with no jails, which worked out fine, no
freezes or crashes at all. Then I created 4 vnet jails, after
which the system got quite unstable. When used it freezes
quite often, at least once a day. Which is no surprise, given
that the VIMAGE kernel feature is described as experimental.

The freezing was quite annoying so I configured watchdogd
to be used.
I added 

```
options SW_WATCHDOG
```
to the kernelconf, and 

```
watchdogd_enable="YES"

dumpdev="/dev/ad0a"
dumpdir="/crash"
```
to rc.conf. I was hoping that the watchdog would kill the system
with "panic" and this would create a crashdump.
However this is not the case. Watchdog rebooted my system about
6 times now, but I get no crashdump at all. Well I think watchdog
did it, but I am not sure how to verify this.
Note that my system is all zfs, first the swap device was also a zfs
filesystem, but as I read that no crash dump could be made on those
I use /dev/ad0a as swap device now, which is just a normal gpt 
partition as you can see from the devicename.

Is there anything I am missing? Any hints how to get crashdumps?
I am hoping the crashdump would help the vnet guys?

Thanks
Johannes


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