dumpadm
Maintenance Commands dumpadm(1M)NAME
dumpadm - configure operating system crash dumpSYNOPSIS
/usr/sbin/dumpadm [ -nuy ] [ -c content-type ] [ -d dump- device ] [ -m min k | min m | min% ] [ -s savecore-dir ] [ -r root-dir ]DESCRIPTION
The dumpadm program is an administrative command that manages the configuration of the operating system crash dump facility. A crash dump is a disk copy of the physical memory of the computer at the time of a fatal system error. When a fatal operating system error occurs, a message describing the error is printed to the console. The operat- ing system then generates a crash dump by writing the con- tents of physical memory to a predetermined dump device, which is typically a local disk partition. The dump device can be configured by way of dumpadm. Once the crash dump has been written to the dump device, the system will reboot. Fatal operating system errors can be caused by bugs in the operating system, its associated device drivers and loadable modules, or by faulty hardware. Whatever the cause, the crash dump itself provides invaluable information to your support engineer to aid in diagnosing the problem. As such, it is vital that the crash dump be retrieved and given to your support provider. Following an operating system crash, the savecore(1M) utility is executed automatically during boot to retrieve the crash dump from the dump device, and write it to a pair of files in your file system named unix.X and vmcore.X, where X is an integer identifying the dump. Together, these data files form the saved crash dump. The directory in which the crash dump is saved on reboot can also be configured using dumpadm. By default, the dump device is configured to be an appropri- ate swap partition. Swap partitions are disk partitions reserved as virtual memory backing store for the operating system, and thus no permanent information resides there to be overwritten by the dump. See swap(1M). To view the current dump configuration, execute dumpadm with no argu- ments: example# dumpadm Dump content: kernel pages Dump device: /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s1 (swap) Savecore directory: /var/crash/betelguese Savecore enabled: yes SunOS 5.8 Last change: 29 Apr 1998 1 Maintenance Commands dumpadm(1M) When no options are specified, dumpadm prints the current crash dump configuration. The example shows the set of default values: the dump content is set to kernel memory pages only, the dump device is a swap disk partition, the directory for savecore files is set to /var/crash/hostname, and savecore is set to run automatically on reboot. When one or more options are specified, dumpadm verifies that your changes are valid, and if so, reconfigures the crash dump parameters and displays the resulting configura- tion. You must be root to view or change dump parameters.OPTIONS
The following options are supported: -c content-type Modify the dump configuration so that the crash dump consists of the specified dump content. The content should be one of the following: kernel Kernel memory pages only. all All memory pages. -d dump-device Modify the dump configuration to use the specified dump device. The dump device may one of the following: dump-device A specific dump device specified as an absolute pathname, such as /dev/dsk/ cNtNdNsN. swap If the special token swap is specified as the dump device, dumpadm examines the active swap entries and selects the most appropriate entry to configure as the dump device. See swap(1M). Refer to the NOTES below for details of the algorithm used to select an appropriate swap entry. When the system is first installed, dum- padm uses swap to determine the initial dump device setting. -m min k | min m | min% Create a minfree file in the current savecore direc- tory indicating that savecore should maintain at least the specified amount of free space in the file system where the savecore directory is located. The min argument can be one of the following: SunOS 5.8 Last change: 29 Apr 1998 2 Maintenance Commands dumpadm(1M) k A positive integer suffixed with the unit k specifying kilobytes. m A positive integer suffixed with the unit m specifying megabytes. % A % symbol, indicating that the minfree value should be computed as the specified percentage of the total current size of the file system containing the savecore directory. The savecore command will consult the minfree file, if present, prior to writing the dump files. If the size of these files would decrease the amount of free disk space below the minfree threshold, no dump files are written and an error message is logged. The administrator should immediately clean up the savecore directory to provide ade- quate free space, and re-execute the savecore command manu- ally. The administrator can also specify an alternate directory on the savecore command-line. -n Modify the dump configuration to not run savecore automatically on reboot. This is not the recommended system configuration; if the dump device is a swap partition, the dump data will be overwritten as the system begins to swap. If savecore is not executed shortly after boot, crash dump retrieval may not be possible. -r root-dir Specify an alternate root directory relative to which dumpadm should create files. If no -r argument is specified, the default root directory "/" is used. -s savecore-dir Modify the dump configuration to use the specified directory to save files written by savecore. The directory should be an absolute path and exist on the system. If upon reboot the directory does not exist, it will be created prior to the execution of savecore. See the NOTES section below for a discussion of secu- rity issues relating to access to the savecore direc- tory. The default savecore directory is /var/crash/hostname where is the output of the -n option to the uname(1) command. -u Forcibly update the kernel dump configuration based on the contents of /etc/dumpadm.conf. Normally this option is used only on reboot by the startup script /etc/init.d/savecore, when the dumpadm settings from the previous boot must be restored. Your dump confi- guration is saved in the configuration file for this SunOS 5.8 Last change: 29 Apr 1998 3 Maintenance Commands dumpadm(1M) purpose. If the configuration file is missing or con- tains invalid values for any dump properties, the default values are substituted. Following the update, the configuration file is resynchronized with the ker- nel dump configuration. -y Modify the dump configuration to automatically run savecore on reboot. This is the default for this dump setting. EXAMPLES Example 1: Reconfiguring The Dump Device To A Dedicated Dump Device: example# dumpadm -d /dev/dsk/c0t2d0s2 Dump content: kernel pages Dump device: /dev/dsk/c0t2d0s2 (dedicated) Savecore directory: /var/crash/betelguese Savecore enabled: yes EXIT STATUS The following exit values are returned: 0 Dump configuration is valid and the specified modifi- cations, if any, were made successfully. 1 A fatal error occurred in either obtaining or modify- ing the dump configuration. 2 Invalid command line options were specified.FILES
/dev/dump /etc/init.d/savecore" /etc/dumpadm.conf savecore-directory/minfreeATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attri- butes: ____________________________________________________________ | ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE | |_____________________________|_____________________________| | Availability | SUNWcsr | |_____________________________|_____________________________| SunOS 5.8 Last change: 29 Apr 1998 4 Maintenance Commands dumpadm(1M)SEE ALSO
uname(1), savecore(1M), swap(1M), attributes(5)NOTES
Dump Device Selection When the special swap token is specified as the argument to dumpadm -d the utility will attempt to configure the most appropriate swap device as the dump device. dumpadm config- ures the largest swap block device as the dump device; if no block devices are available for swap, the largest swap entry is configured as the dump device. If no swap entries are present, or none can be configured as the dump device, a warning message will be displayed. While local and remote swap files can be configured as the dump device, this is not recommended. Dump Device/Swap Device Interaction In the event that the dump device is also a swap device, and the swap device is deleted by the administrator using the swap -d command, the swap command will automatically invoke dumpadm -d swap in order to attempt to configure another appropriate swap device as the dump device. If no swap dev- ices remain or none can be configured as the dump device, the crash dump will be disabled and a warning message will be displayed. Similarly, if the crash dump is disabled and the administrator adds a new swap device using the swap -a command, dumpadm -d swap will be invoked to re-enable the crash dump using the new swap device. Once dumpadm -d swap has been issued, the new dump device is stored in the configuration file for subsequent reboots. If a larger or more appropriate swap device is added by the administrator, the dump device is not changed; the adminis- trator must re-execute dumpadm -d swap to reselect the most appropriate device fom the new list of swap devices. Minimum Free Space If the dumpadm -m option is used to create a minfree file based on a percentage of the total size of the file system containing the savecore directory, this value is not automatically recomputed if the file system subsequently changes size. In this case, the administrator must re- execute dumpadm -m to recompute the minfree value. If no such file exists in the savecore directory, savecore will default to a free space threshold of one megabyte. If no free space threshold is desired, a minfree file containing size 0 can be created. Security Issues If, upon reboot, the specified savecore directory is not present, it will be created prior to the execution of savecore with permissions 0700 (read, write, execute by SunOS 5.8 Last change: 29 Apr 1998 5 Maintenance Commands dumpadm(1M) owner only) and owner root. It is recommended that alternate savecore directories also be created with similar permis- sions, as the operating system crash dump files themselves may contain secure information. SunOS 5.8 Last change: 29 Apr 1998 6