What's New in the Solaris 8 Operating Environment

Diagnostic and Availability Enhancements

This section describes new features in the Solaris 8 operating environment that affect system configuration and troubleshooting.

Improved Core File Management

The `coreadm` command

This release introduces the coreadm command, which provides flexible core file naming conventions and better core file retention. For example, you can use the coreadm command to configure a system so that all process core files are placed in a single system directory. This means it is easier to track problems by examining the core files in a specific directory whenever a Solaris process or daemon terminates abnormally.

Two new configurable core file paths, per-process and global, can be enabled or disabled independent of each other. When a process terminates abnormally, it produces a core file in the current directory as in previous Solaris releases. But if a global core file path is enabled and set to /corefiles/core, for example, then each process that terminates abnormally produces two core files: one in the current working directory and one in the /corefiles directory.

By default, the Solaris core paths and core file retention remain the same.

See the System Administration Guide, Volume 2 and the man page coreadm(1M) for more information.

This feature was first available in the Solaris 7 8/99 release.

Examining Core Files With Proc Tools

Some of the proc tools have been enhanced to examine process core files as well as live processes. The proc tools are utilities that can manipulate features of the /proc file system.

The /usr/proc/bin/pstack, pmap, pldd, pflags, and pcred tools can now be applied to core files by specifying the name of the core file on the command line, similar to the way you specify a process ID to these commands. For example:

$ ./a.out
Segmentation Fault(coredump)
$ /usr/proc/bin/pstack ./core
core './core' of 19305: ./a.out
 000108c4 main     (1, ffbef5cc, ffbef5d4, 20800, 0, 0) + 1c
 00010880 _start   (0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0) + b8

For more information on using proc tools to examine core files, see the man page proc(1).

Improved Device Configuration (`devfsadm` )

The devfsadm command provides an improved mechanism for managing the special device files in the /dev and /devices directories, including support for dynamic reconfiguration events.

In previous Solaris releases, device configuration was handled by drvconfig, which managed the physical device entries in the /devices directory, and five link generators, devlinks, disks, tapes, ports, and audlinks, which managed the logical device entries in the /dev directory. For compatibility purposes, drvconfig and the other link generators are symbolic links to the devfsadm utility.

Both reconfiguration boot processing and updating the /dev and /devices directories in response to dynamic reconfiguration events are handled by devfsadmd, the daemon version of the devfsadm command. This daemon is started from the /etc/rc* scripts when a system is booted.

Since devfsadmd, the devfsadm daemon, automatically detects device configuration changes generated by any reconfiguration event, there is no need to run this command interactively.

This feature was first available in the Solaris 7 11/99 release.

For more information, see the man page devfsadm(1M).

Improved System Error Messages

The system boot and error message format now provides a numeric identifier, module name, and time stamp to messages generated by the syslog(1M) logging facility. In addition, messages that were previously lost after a system panic and reboot are now saved.

This feature was first available in the Solaris 7 3/99 release.

Modular Debugger

Modular debugger (mdb) is a new extensible utility for low-level debugging and editing of the live operating system, operating system crash dumps, user processes, user process core dumps, and object files. mdb provides a completely customizable environment for debugging complex software systems, such as an operating system, for programs that are highly optimized, have had their debug information removed, or are themselves low-level debugging tools. mdb also handles customer situations where developers can access only post-mortem information.

For more information, see Solaris Modular Debugger Guide and themdb(1) man page.

Remote Console Messaging

This release includes the consadm command, which enables you to select a serial device as an auxiliary (or remote) console for troubleshooting remote system problems.

This feature enables you to dial in to a serial port with a modem to monitor console messages and participate in init state transitions.

For more information, see the man page consadm(1M) and the System Administration Guide, Volume 2.

This feature was first available in the Solaris 7 5/99 release.

TCP/IP Internal Trace Support

TCP/IP now provides internal trace support by logging TCP communication when a connection is terminated by a reset (RST) packet. When an RST packet is transmitted or received, information on as many as 10 packets, transmitted or received immediately before on that connection, is logged with the connection information.

For more information, see the System Administration Guide, Volume 3.