title: Analyzing a Xen core dump
body: <p>After a Xen guest domain hang, I took a dump using xm core-dump . Following the sparse documentation I found, I tried using the crash utility to analyze the dump.</p>
  <p>Unfortunately, the kernel image (Debian lenny) is stripped, so I am forced to make use of the map file.</p>
  <p>However,</p>
  <blockquote>
  <p>crash
  /boot/System.map-2.6.26-2-xen-amd64
  vmlinux-2.6.26-2-xen-amd64
  /mnt/my-core-file</p>
  </blockquote>
  <p>(with vmlinux-2.6.26-2-xen-amd64 being the gunzip'ed vmlinuz image) fails:</p>
  <blockquote>
  <p>crash: vmlinux-2.6.26-2-xen-amd64: no
  debugging data available</p>
  </blockquote>
  <p>Then I read that current Xen versions produce ELF-compatible dumps for guest domains. Indeed, this seems to be the case:</p>
  <blockquote>
  <p>~$ sudo file my-core-dump</p>
  <p>my-core-dump: ELF 64-bit LSB core file x86-64, version 1</p>
  </blockquote>
  <p>However, gdb vmlinux-2.6.26-2-xen-amd64 my-core-dump fails, too:</p>
  <blockquote>
  <p>...is not a core dump: File format not
  recognized</p>
  </blockquote>
  <p>Any hints?</p>