Ubuntu – kernel panic logs

kernellog

I've got problem with Handbrake/ffmpeg. After ~5 minutes transcoding, the computer locks up. I'm fairly sure it's a kernel panic because caps-lock starts flashing.

There are a few logical questions about what to do and some about specific bugs but I'm really after one thing: what happened right before everything died?!

I've checked /var/log/kern.log and all I see around the time is me sticking in a DVD and then a few minutes later, the system booting up. No errors, no panic notice.

Is there any way to force panics to be logged? I'm fairly sure I can reproduce this (it's happened 100% of the times I've tried recently) so while I'd rather this "just worked", I'm happy enough to reboot a few times if it means I can find the cause of the panic.

Best Answer

All your system logs in Ubuntu are handled by rsyslog which keeps its configuration in /etc/rsyslog.conf and /etc/rsyslog.d/.

For more information on how to configure rsyslog and the possible options visit the rsyslog.conf man page.

Opening /etc/rsyslog.d/50-default.conf you can see that one of the lines contains

*.*;auth,authpriv.none -/var/log/syslog*

Meaning that the file you are looking for in this case is any of the huge /var/log/syslog logs you will probably have.

You can see that the file name also starts with a -, this means that the file is cached before writing, its great but can leave you with a bad log, what you want is that the log is written as soon as there is a problem. Remove the dash and reboot or reload rsyslog and then make your computer crash again, check /var/log/syslog.

Related Question