Reboot Linux box after a kernel panic

by on November 16, 2007 · 3 comments· Last updated November 16, 2007

If you want the server to get rebooted automatically after kernel hit by a pain error message, try adding panic=N to /etc/sysctl.conf file.

It specify kernel behavior on panic. By default, the kernel will not reboot after a panic, but this option will cause a kernel reboot after N seconds. For example following boot parameter will force to reboot Linux after 10 seconds.

Open /etc/sysctl.conf file

# vi /etc/sysctl.conf

When kernel panic's, reboot after 10 second delay

kernel.panic = 10

Save and close the file. Alternatively, you may want to enable and use magic system request keys (SysRq).



You should follow me on twitter here or grab rss feed to keep track of new changes.

Featured Articles:

{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Anonymous November 16, 2007 at 3:47 pm

Thanks for this tip. My computer had a kernel panic for the first time a couple of weeks ago and I had no choice but to reboot it manually.

Reply

2 mangoo November 21, 2007 at 6:36 pm

One can also add panic=10 to the kernel command line, it will have exactly the same effect.

Of course, it’s possible to change it later with sysctl, or by writing to /proc:

echo 10 > /proc/sys/kernel/panic

Reply

3 Rene September 23, 2009 at 8:38 am

Thanks for this tip! As indicated by mangoo: To take this change effect right now, issue the command
sysctl -p to re-read the /etc/sysctl.conf
Otherwise, this change is not active before the next reboot.

Reply

Leave a Comment

You can use these HTML tags and attributes for your code and commands: <strong> <em> <ol> <li> <u> <ul> <blockquote> <pre> <a href="" title="">
What is 2 + 15 ?
Please leave these two fields as-is:
Solve the simple math so we know that you are a human and not a bot.




Tagged as: , , , , , , ,

Previous post:

Next post: