How to Examine a Crash Dump

1. Become superuser or assume an equivalent role.

   Roles contain authorizations and privileged commands. For more information about roles, see Configuring RBAC (Task Map) in System Administration Guide: Security Services.

2. Examine a crash dump by using the mdb utility.

   # /usr/bin/mdb [-k] crashdump-file

   -k

   Specifies kernel debugging mode by assuming the file is an operating system crash dump file.

   crashdump-file

   Specifies the operating system crash dump file.

3. Display crash status information.

   # /usr/bin/mdb file-name > ::status . . . > ::system . . .

Example 17–2 Examining a Crash Dump

The following example shows sample output from the mdb utility, which includes system information and identifies the tunables that are set in this system's /etc/system file.

# /usr/bin/mdb -k unix.0 
Loading modules: [ unix krtld genunix ip nfs ipc ptm ]
> ::status
debugging crash dump /dev/mem (64-bit) from ozlo
operating system: 5.10 Generic (sun4u)
> ::system
set ufs_ninode=0x9c40 [0t40000]
set ncsize=0x4e20 [0t20000]
set pt_cnt=0x400 [0t1024]