Setting up kdump in SUSE Linux Enterprise Micro

For SUSE Linux Enterprise Micro versions 5.3 and after, run:

transactional-update setup-kdump

For SUSE Linux Enterprise Micro versions before 5.3, do the following:

Make sure that kdump / kexec is installed :

zypper se kdump
zypper se kexec

An "i" or "i+" at the beginning of the line indicates that the packet is already installed.
If it is not installed, it can be installed via 

transactional-update pkg install kdump
transactional-update pkg install kexec-tools

Run kdumptool calibrate to get memory values for crash-kernel as follows:

srv1:~ # kdumptool calibrate
        Total: 32766
        Low: 72
        High: 200
        MinLow: 72
        MaxLow: 2848
        MinHigh: 0
        MaxHigh: 29696

Edit /etc/default/grub and customize GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT 

vi /etc/default/grub
...
   GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="useonlinerepo=1 swapaccount=1 mitigations=auto quiet crashkernel=200M"

After GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT has been customized, services need to be enabled.

systemctl enable kdump
systemctl enable kexec-load.service 

The new grub.cfg has to be applied: 

transactional-update grub.cfg #reboot

Make sure to reboot after this step. 
 
A new initrd has to be created:

transactional-update initrd #reboot

and the machine has to be rebooted again. 

After the server comes up again, verify that kdump is running: 

srv1:~ # systemctl status kdump
● kdump.service - Load kdump kernel and initrd
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/kdump.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
     Active: active (exited) since Wed 2022-02-09 12:31:24 UTC; 1 week 0 days ago
    Process: 2161 ExecStart=/lib/kdump/load.sh --update (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
   Main PID: 2161 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)

Feb 09 12:31:23 cmp1 systemd[1]: Starting Load kdump kernel and initrd...
Feb 09 12:31:24 cmp1 systemd[1]: Finished Load kdump kernel and initrd.

The kexec-load service does not need to run. It only runs once during server start to load the crashkernel into memory. It is enough to just enable the service.

If there are issues in the kdump status regarding kdump kernel memory, it might be necessary to set a "high" and a "low" value. Please refer to 

https://documentation.suse.com/sles/15-SP3/html/SLES-all/cha-tuning-kexec.html#sec-tuning-kexec-crashkernel