Can the NAS be set to do "mini" system dumps when the system has RAM > swap size?

[Stilez]

As the question says.

If there's a system error, a dump is usually automatic. But in my case the boot device is small, RAM is > 100GB and as a result dump is being disabled on startup. I really don't want to permanently lose 128-256 GB of data space on the off-chance I'll need a panic dump some time. But if I do need it, I'll regret not having it :)

On Windows (which I'm more familiar with) there are options to handle this - you can specify to output the entire RAM, or about 4 smaller sizings down to down to kernel only.

Is there a way to do this for the NAS, so that if a panic occurs I can still get something helpful in say 10 - 20GB of swap, and not need to allocate 128/256 GB for it? If not, is there a way in the GUI to create a suitable swap space on a spare disk (NOT on all data disks!) so that the OS can detect it and use it for dump?

 

[dlavigne]

Since these are saved to the system dataset you'll want to configure a location with sufficient space: http://doc.freenas.org/11/system.html#system-dataset.

 

[Stilez]

Not really what I need to know. I know that I can provision a system (or other) location with the space needed, but my question's more about elegance/efficiency - namely my total reluctance to give anything a full 0.15 TB of platter if at all possible, that'll be perennially wasted and 100% unused unless a dump is ever needed, and whether FreeBSD has a way to configure a dump some kind of smaller memory space (kernel, stack, or similar) rather than "all or nothing" and the full 128GB of physical RAM, so that not as much wastage is involved :) Thanks!

 

[dlavigne]

The location you select doesn't take away from your storage, it just knows to write the core dump there if it's ever needed.