[CentOS] INIT 5 and system is gone

[nate]

Robert Moskowitz wrote:

> No serial port. No parallel port. Just VGA, 4 USBs, and Audio. And no
> access to setting the BIOS.

If it's CentOS 4.x you could setup a netdump server so if there is
a kernel panic it writes it to the server.

If it's CentOS 5.x netdump was replaced with diskdump as far as I can
tell, you can see an overview here:

http://www.redhatmagazine.com/2007/08/15/a-quick-overview-of-linux-kernel-crash-dump-analysis/

Assuming it is causing a kernel panic, it could just be faulty hardware
freezing up(bad ram etc).

In my experience this is the only way to get info out of a system that
freezes in this fashion, log events that point to the cause are extremely
rare.

nate