Post-Reboot Dump Processing

Prior to HP-UX 11.0, one of the first user space tasks in the boot process was running savecore (now obsolete), which would check for a crash dump and, if found, copy it from the dump device(s) to the file system. This same program had many other features used by system administrators after the system was up.

In HP-UX release 11.0 and later releases, savecrash(1M) and crashutil(1M) handle boot-time tasks and post-boot tasks, respectively.

The savecrash(1M) command runs at boot time; it preserves any and all crash-related information which could be lost as system activity continues. It has many options, which may be set in /etc/rc.config.d/savecrash. One thing worth noting is that savecrash can be told to save only that portion of the crash dump endangered by swap activity, rather than all of it (the default). This is useful for debugging on the system that crashed: the debuggers can debug straight out of the dump devices. (See “Debugging of Crash Dumps”.) If care has been taken to configure dump devices that are not shared by swap activity (see “Crash Dump Configuration”), this means that virtually all of the time it would normally take to copy the dump onto the file system can be eliminated. The crashutil(1M) command handles all of the post-boot crash dump manipulation. Currently it has two main functions. First, it completes saving those portions of the dump that reside on non-swap dump devices. The crashutil command copies the remaining portions of the dump onto file system so that it can be transported to another system for debugging. Second, it converts dumps from one dump format to another. For example, an 11.0 dump can be converted to an older format so that old debugging tools can access the dump. Note: The concept of a special tape format for dumps has gone away. If dumps are needed on tape: