Because a kernel panic or oops may indicate potential problem with your server, configure your server to remove itself from the cluster in the event of a problem. Typically on a kernel panic, your system automatically triggers a hard reboot. For a kernel oops, a reboot may not happen automatically, but the issue that caused that oops may still lead to potential problems.

You can force a reboot by setting the kernel.panic and kernel.panic_on_oops parameters of the kernel control file /etc/sysctl.conf. For example:

 kernel.panic_on_oops = 1
 kernel.panic = 1
  

You can also set these parameters during runtime by using the sysctl command. You can either specify the parameters on the command line:

shell> sysctl -w kernel.panic=1
  

Or you can edit your sysctl.conf file and then reload the configuration information:

shell> sysctl -p
 

Setting both these parameters to a positive value (representing the number of seconds to wait before rebooting), causes the system to reboot. Your second heartbeat node should then detect that the server is down and then switch over to the failover host.