3. Installation of lkcd

3.1. Installing From Source Code

Get the lkcdutils-xxx.src.rpm and install it using rpm -i kcdutils-xxx.src.rpm . This will place a file called lkcdutils-xxx.tar.gz in the /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES directory. This file is a compressed tar image of the lkcd source tree. Unwind the source in a directory of your choice like "/usr/src" with tar -zxvf kcdutils-xxx.src.rpm . This will create a directory called "kcdutils-xxx" which will contain the LKCD utilities source.

3.2. Building and Installing LKCD Utilities

LKCD used the standard GCC compiler and make files. To build the suite, cd to the LKCD src directory and run ./configure to build configuration files. The next step is to run make to build the utilities, and finally run make install to install the utilities and man pages.

3.3. What Gets Installed

  /etc/sysconfig/dump             # Configuration file for dump
  /sbin/lcrash                    # The crash utility
  /sbin/lkcd                      # Script to configure and save a crash
  /sbin/lkcd_config               # Configuration utility for dump
  /sbin/lkcd_ksyms                # Utility for reconstructing kernel symbols 
  /usr/include/sial_api.h         # Header file for the SIAL API
  /usr/lib/libsial.a              # Simple Image Access Language library
  /usr/man/man1/lcrash.1          # man page for lcrash
  /usr/man/man1/lkcd_config.1     # man page for lkcd_config
  /usr/man/man1/lkcd_ksyms.1      # man page for lkcd_ksyms
  /usr/share/sial/lcrash/ps.sial  # ps command implementation of SIAL
      

3.4. Installing LKCD Utilities From RPM

You can install the pre-built utilities from rpm by running rpm -i kcdutils-xxx.rpm . You will still need to patch the kernel and install the startup script patches. However you can bypass building the utilities step.

3.5. Patching the Kernel

The next step is patching and rebuilding the kernel. You will need to patch the kernel source with the lkcd-xxx.diff file you downloaded from http://lkcd.sourceforge.net/. Copy the patch into the same directory as your kernel and run patch -p0 < lkcd-kernelxxx.diff . Make sure the patch you use is the same version as the kernel you are patching. Next you will need to configure the kernel to enable crash dump support. By default crash support is turned off after applying the patch. If you use make menuconfig or make xconfig, the "LKCD support" option is under kernel hacking. You will also need to enable other kernel features you might need. See the The Linux Kernel HOWTO for further details.

3.6. Build and Install the Kernel

The next is building and installing the crash enabled kernel. In the kernel source directory run the following commands in order.

 
  make depend 
  make install 
  make modules
  make modules_install
      

This will build and installing the new kernel, you will also need to copy the Kerntypes file from the kernel source to the /boot directory. You may also need to edit the lilo.conf file to point to you new kernel. See http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Kernel-HOWTO.html for more information on building and installing a kernel.