IBM User Guide for Java V7 on Windows > Troubleshooting and support > Using diagnostic tools > Using system dumps and the dump viewer

Overview of system dumps

The JVM can produce system dumps in response to specific events. A system dump is a raw binary dump of the process memory when the dump agent is triggered by a failure or by an event for which a dump is requested.

Generally, you use a tool to examine the contents of a system dump. A dump viewer tool is provided in the SDK, as described in this section, or you could use a platform-specific debugger, such as windbg, to examine the dump.

For dumps triggered by a General Protection Fault (GPF), dumps produced by the JVM contain some context information that you can read. You can find this failure context information by searching in the dump for the eye-catcher

J9Generic_Signal_Number

For example:

J9Generic_Signal_Number=00000004 ExceptionCode=c0000005 ExceptionAddress=7FAB506D ContextFlags=0001003f
Handler1=7FEF79C0 Handler2=7FED8CF0 InaccessibleAddress=0000001C
EDI=41FEC3F0 ESI=00000000 EAX=41FB0E60 EBX=41EE6C01
ECX=41C5F9C0 EDX=41FB0E60
EIP=7FAB506D ESP=41C5F948 EBP=41EE6CA4
Module=E:\testjava\java7-32\sdk\jre\bin\j9jit24.dll
Module_base_address=7F8D0000 Offset_in_DLL=001e506d

Method_being_compiled=org/junit/runner/JUnitCore.runMain([Ljava/lang/String;)Lorg/junit/runner/Result; 

Dump agents are the primary method for controlling the generation of system dumps. See Using dump agents for more information on dump agents.

Parent: Using system dumps and the dump viewer

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