System Crash Dump Features

This section describes how to manage system crash dump information in the Solaris environment.

• The new dumpadm command, which allows system administrators to configure crash dumps of the operating system. The dumpadm configuration parameters include the dump content, dump device, and the directory in which crash dump files are saved. See "The dumpadm Command" for more information about the dumpadm command.

• Dump data is now stored in compressed format on the dump device. Kernel crash dump images can be as big as 4 Gbytes or more. Compressing the data means faster dumping and less disk space needed for the dump device.

• Saving crash dump files is run in the background when a dedicated dump device--not the swap area--is part of the dump configuration. This means a booting system does not wait for the savecore command to complete before going to the next step. On large memory systems, the system can be available before savecore completes.

• System crash dump files, generated by the savecore command, are now saved by default.

• The savecore -L command is a new feature which enables you to get a crash dump of the live running Solaris operating environment. This command is intended for troubleshooting a running system by taking a snapshot of memory during some bad state--such as a transient performance problem or service outage. If the system is up and you can still run some commands, you can execute the savecore -L to save a snapshot of the system to the dump device, and then immediately write out the crash dump files to your savecore directory. Because the system is still running, you may only use savecore -L if you have configured a dedicated dump device.