System Crash and the SYSTEM_DUMP Utility

This feature requires to you to have the HOT_RESTART and BLACKBOX features set to true. You must also have a TFTP daemon running on the host server.

If a microkernel crash occurs in the ChorusOS operating system, the SYSTEM_DUMP feature enables you to read blackbox information. If the microkernel raises an exception, the SYSTEM_DUMP panic handler saves specific information. This is dumped into a persistent memory area, allocated at boot time. The feature then forces a hot reboot to reset the microkernel to a stable state. After reboot, a special actor called the system dump actor uses TFTP to dump an ASCII file on your predetermined host. This ASCII file contains the information contained in the BLACKBOX facility.

The iom.wdt.sysdump tunable is common to both system dump and watchdog timer. The value of iom.wdt.sysdump is set to 0 by default.

If the value of this tunable is set to 1, SYSTEM_DUMP is true and the watchdog timer feature, (feature name: WDT) is true, a system dump is triggered on the host server when the watchdog timer expires.

For more information, consult SYSTEM_DUMP(5FEA).