When the system panics, or when you enter reboot –d, messages similar to the following are displayed on the system console:
Oct 15 12:57:42 testsystem savecore: Decompress all crash dump files with
'(cd /var/crash/data/
cbc9822c-2f13-63c6-d440-d2f118516775 && savecore -v 0)'
or individual files with
'savecore -vf /var/crash/data/
cbc9822c-2f13-63c6-d440-d2f118516775/vmdump{,-<secname>}.0'
Enter the following command to decompress all the compressed dump files.
root@testsystem # (cd /var/crash/data/ cbc9822c-2f13-63c6-d440-d2f118516775 && savecore -v 0) savecore: System dump time: Tue Oct 15 12:54:49 2013 savecore: saving system crash dump in /var/crash/data/ cbc9822c-2f13-63c6-d440-d2f118516775/vmcore.0 Constructing corefile /var/crash/data/cbc9822c-2f13-63c6-d440-d2f118516775/vmcore.0 0:31 100% done: 404632 of 404632 pages saved 119246 (29%) zero pages were not written dump decompression took 0 minutes and 31 seconds savecore: saving system crash dump in /var/crash/data/ cbc9822c-2f13-63c6-d440-d2f118516775/vmcore-zfs.0 Constructing corefile /var/crash/data/cbc9822c-2f13-63c6-d440-d2f118516775/vmcore-zfs.0 0:00 100% done: 14302 of 14302 pages saved 82 (0%) zero pages were not written dump decompression took 307.711 milliseconds
Starting with the Oracle Solaris 11.2 release, kernel symbol table file unix.n is not created during the decompression of a compressed dump file. The required symbol table is already embedded in the vmcore.n file. The unix.n file is not required for loading the crash dump using mdb.
Now you can use mdb.
root@testsystem# cd /var/crash/0 root@testsystem# ls root@testsystem# ls vmcore-zfs.0 vmcore.0 vmdump-zfs.0 vmdump.0 root@testsystem#mdb 0 Loading modules: [ unix genunix specfs dtrace zfs scsi_vhci sd mpt mac px ldc ds ip hook neti arp usba kssl fctl random sockfs idm cpc crypto fcip ufs logindmux ptm sppp nfs ] >
You can copy the vmdump*.n file to another system for analysis. You can use savecore either locally or remotely to uncompress the dump file. Use the dumpadm command to control the dump content, particular paths of the dump device, and the savecore directory.
You can use the file command to examine files in the directory.
root@testsystem# pwd /var/crash/0 root@testsystem# file * vmcore-zfs.0: SunOS 5.11 11.2 64-bit SPARC crash dump from 'testsystem' vmcore.0: SunOS 5.11 11.2 64-bit SPARC crash dump from 'testsystem' vmdump-zfs.0: SunOS 5.11 11.2 64-bit SPARC compressed crash dump from 'testsystem' vmdump.0: SunOS 5.11 11.2 64-bit SPARC compressed crash dump from 'testsystem'