crash(8v) [ultrix man page]
crash(8v) crash(8v) Name crash - what happens when the system crashes Description This section explains what happens when the system crashes and shows how to analyze crash dumps. When the system crashes voluntarily it prints a message on the console in the form: panic: explanation The system takes a dump on a mass storage peripheral device or the network, and then invokes an automatic reboot procedure as described in Unless there is some unexpected inconsistency in the state of the file systems due to hardware or software failure, the system then resumes multi-user operations. If auto-reboot is disabled, the system halts at this point. The system has a large number of internal consistency checks; if one of these fails, it prints a short message indicating which one failed. The most common cause of system failures is hardware failure. In all cases there is the possibility that hardware or software error pro- duced the message in some unexpected way. These messages are the ones you are likely to encounter: IO err in push hard IO err in swap The system encountered an error when trying to write to the paging device or an error in reading critical information from a disk drive. Fix your disk if it is broken or unreliable. timeout table overflow Due to the current data structure, running out of entries causes a crash. If this happens, make the timeout table bigger. Exception Condition An unexpected system error has occurred. The exception types are as follows: --------------------------------------------------------------- Mnemonic Description --------------------------------------------------------------- INT External interrupt MOD TLB modification exception TLBL TLB miss exception (load or instruction fetch) TLBS TLB miss exception (store) AdEL Address error exception (load or instruction fetch) AdES Address error exception (store) IBE Bus error exception (for an instruction fetch) DBE Bus error exception (for a data load or store) Sys Sys call exception Bp Breakpoint exception CpU Coprocessor unusable exception Ovf Arithmetic overflow exception --------------------------------------------------------------- KSP not valid This indicates either a problem in the system or failing hardware. init died The system initialization process has exited. The only solution is the automatic reboot procedure described in Until this is done, new users cannot log in. When the system crashes, it attempts to write an image of memory into the back end of the primary swap area. After the system is rebooted, the program runs and preserves a copy of this core image and the current system in a specified directory for later access. See for details. To analyze a dump, you should begin by running with the flag on the core dump. See Also dbx(1), reboot(8), savecore(8) RISC crash(8v)
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savecore(1M) System Administration Commands savecore(1M) NAME
savecore - save a crash dump of the operating system SYNOPSIS
/usr/bin/savecore [-Lvd] [-f dumpfile] [directory] DESCRIPTION
The savecore utility saves a crash dump of the kernel (assuming that one was made) and writes a reboot message in the shutdown log. It is invoked by the dumpadm service each time the system boots. savecore saves the crash dump data in the file directory/vmcore.n and the kernel's namelist in directory/unix.n. The trailing .n in the pathnames is replaced by a number which grows every time savecore is run in that directory. Before writing out a crash dump, savecore reads a number from the file directory/minfree. This is the minimum number of kilobytes that must remain free on the file system containing directory. If after saving the crash dump the file system containing directory would have less free space the number of kilobytes specified in minfree, the crash dump is not saved. if the minfree file does not exist, savecore assumes a minfree value of 1 megabyte. The savecore utility also logs a reboot message using facility LOG_AUTH (see syslog(3C)). If the system crashed as a result of a panic, savecore logs the panic string too. OPTIONS
The following options are supported: -d Disregard dump header valid flag. Force savecore to attempt to save a crash dump even if the header information stored on the dump device indicates the dump has already been saved. -f dumpfile Attempt to save a crash dump from the specified file instead of from the system's current dump device. This option may be useful if the information stored on the dump device has been copied to an on-disk file by means of the dd(1M) command. -L Save a crash dump of the live running Solaris system, without actually rebooting or altering the system in any way. This option forces savecore to save a live snapshot of the system to the dump device, and then immediately to retrieve the data and to write it out to a new set of crash dump files in the specified directory. Live system crash dumps can only be per- formed if you have configured your system to have a dedicated dump device using dumpadm(1M). savecore -L does not suspend the system, so the contents of memory continue to change while the dump is saved. This means that live crash dumps are not fully self-consistent. -v Verbose. Enables verbose error messages from savecore. OPERANDS
The following operands are supported: directory Save the crash dump files to the specified directory. If directory is not specified, savecore saves the crash dump files to the default savecore directory, configured by dumpadm(1M). FILES
directory/vmcore.n directory/unix.n directory/bounds directory/minfree /var/crash/'uname -n' default crash dump directory ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes: +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ | ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ |Availability |SUNWcsu | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ SEE ALSO
adb(1), mdb(1), svcs(1), dd(1M), dumpadm(1M), svcadm(1M), syslog(3C), attributes(5), smf(5) NOTES
The system crash dump service is managed by the service management facility, smf(5), under the service identifier: svc:/system/dumpadm:default Administrative actions on this service, such as enabling, disabling, or requesting restart, can be performed using svcadm(1M). The ser- vice's status can be queried using the svcs(1) command. If the dump device is also being used as a swap device, you must run savecore very soon after booting, before the swap space containing the crash dump is overwritten by programs currently running. SunOS 5.10 25 Sep 2004 savecore(1M)