How to Debug a Kernel Panic in Production

Linux Server Admin with Fexingo: Sysadmin, Bash, and Server Engineering · May 25, 2026 · 8m · transcript

When your production server suddenly drops into a kernel panic, the instinct is to reboot and hope it doesn't happen again. Lucas and Luna walk through a real case from a fintech startup where a misconfigured memory module caused intermittent panics across a 200-node cluster. They explain how to capture crash dumps, read the stack trace to identify the offending driver or hardware, and use tools like kdump, crash, and mcelog to pinpoint the root cause. The episode also covers prophylactic measures: setting up netconsole for remote logging, enabling panic-timeouts for automatic reboot, and…