my steps to configure kdump/kexec

Hi! I used linux-2.6.31.13 on Ubuntu 9.10 on my VMware to configure kdump &kexec, but I failed. My steps are:

1.I uncompressed linux-2.6.31.13.tar.bz2 twice, and got 2 source code. I named it as linux-2.6.31.13-system and linux-2.6.31.13-capture , i.e., the "system kernel" and "capture kernel".

2.I first compiled the "system kernel" with the following options:
CONFIG_KEXEC=y
CONFIG_SYSFS=y
CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO=Y
local version: -system

3.I executed these commands:
make install
make modules_install
And then I produced file:
initrd.img-2.6.31.13-system .

4.I edited grub to add the parameter: crashkernel=128M@16M

5.I executed the command: update-grub2
Then I reboot my computer with my "system kernel", everything is right!

6.I compiled the "capture kernel" with the following options:
local version: -capture
CONFIG_KEXEC=y
CONFIG_SYSFS=y
CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO=Y
ONFIG_CRASH_DUMP=y
CONFIG_PROC_VMCORE=y
CONFIG_HIGHMEM64G=y
CONFIG_SMP=n
CONFIG_RELOCATABLE=y
CONFIG_PHYSICAL_START=0x1000000

7.I executed the command: make modules_install
And then I produced file: initrd.img-2.6.31.13-capture

8.I executed the command: apt-get install kexec-tools

9.I copied ./linux-2.6.31.13-capture/vmlinux to /home/administrator/
And I copied initrd.img-2.6.31.13-capture to /home/administrator/

10.I executed the command:
kexec -p /home/administrator/vmlinux --initrd=/home/administrator/initrd.img-2.6.31.13-capture --args-linux --append="root=/dev/hda1 1 irqpoll maxcpus=1 reset_devices "

After the above 10 steps, I didn't see any abnormal things or any error messages.

Then I triggerred a "panic(...)" sentence added by me in the kernel file tun.c , shortly I saw that the kernel was dead and the mouse and keyboard were all dead.

But the screen remained unchanged for a long time, and I couldn't see the "capture kernel" to replace "system kernel" to work.

Could anyone help me? Thanks a lot!

Hi wolaile,
I'm having exactly the same problem. My systems seems to boot with no warnings and kexec seems to load the "capture" kernel. But when the kernel hangs nothing happens.
I'm using a custom 2.6.36 kernel on a x86 machine (debian 5) and I've compiled kexec-tools form the source (git repo).

Have you found a solution?

Cheers