US 2018/0322016 A1 · SYSTEM AND METHOD TO CAPTURE STORED DATA FOLLOWING SYSTEM CRASH

Abstract

A method and system respond to a system reset by executing a BIOS that establishes pre-OS communication with a baseboard management controller (BMC) and determines the state of a flag maintained by the BMC. The flag indicates whether the system reset was part of a crash event or a controlled shutdown. If the flag indicated a crash event, contents of the server cache are copied to a persistent secondary memory. The content of the secondary memory may then be sent to a management resource and/or to a remote management system. Before booting to an operating system and resuming normal operation, the flag may be SET. When a subsequent system resent occurs, the flag is cleared if the system reset is part of a controlled shutdown. Otherwise, the flag will remain set to indicate the crash event when the boot sequence is initiated.

Claims17

Dependent claims

A method of operating an information handling system, the method comprising:

initiating a boot sequence responsive to detecting a system reset, wherein the boot sequence includes:
establishing pre-operating system communication with a management controller of the information handling system;
detecting a state of a crash flag of the management controller;
responsive to detecting the crash flag in a SET state, performing crash dump operations, comprising:
saving a crash snapshot, comprising at least a portion of system memory contents, to a persistent secondary memory;
and
booting to the operating system and setting the crash flag to the SET state;
and
responsive to detecting a controlled shutdown of the information handling system, causing the management controller to set the crash flag to a RESET state.

6 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

System and method to capture stored data following system crash

Life of this patent

System and method to capture stored data following system crash

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims17