NAME

ldsysdump − load system dump from selected devices

SYNOPSIS

/usr/sbin/ldsysdump [-n] [-u] [-a] [-f special device] destination_file
/usr/sbin/ldsysdump -i -f file
/usr/sbin/ldsysdump -M msg_file [-n] [-u] [-a] [-N name_list] [-f special device]
/usr/sbin/ldsysdump -d mem_image -M msg_file [-N name_list]

DESCRIPTION

The ldsysdump command loads the memory image files from the special device (/dev/rmt/ctape1 default) used to take a crash dump and recombines them into a single file on the hard disk suitable for use by the crash command.  The destination_file is the name of the hard disk file into which the data from the source media will be loaded. 

When invoked, ldsysdump begins an interactive procedure that prompts the user to insert the media into the drive that the sysdump will be loaded from.  In the case where the dump image is contained in a hard disk slice, no loading is required.  The user has the option of quitting the session at any time.  This allows only the portion of the system image needed to be dumped, if required. 

If ldsysdump is invoked with the -a option, it will not prompt the user and fails if it encounters an error condition. 

After the dump is recovered and if the source of the dump is a disk, ldsysdump writes a marker into the source dump image to mark the dump as used.  It will refuse to recover such a marked dump unless the -u flag is provided. 

ldsysdump automatically recognizes and uncompresses compressed dumps unless the -n option is specified. See crashconf(1M) for more information on compressed memory images.  Dumps recovered in this manner make sparse files so that they appear to occupy immense quantities of disk space but, in fact, use only a relatively small amount.  See ls(1) or du(1) for information on viewing file block usage.  The -n flag suppresses uncompression.  ldsysdump may then later be used to uncompress that image. 

The -i flag prints information about a dump image, with no other action. 

Using the -m or -M options to ldsysdump will result in the console messages stored in the putbuf to be extracted from the crash dump into the specified msg_file. The -m option will allow for the extraction of the console messages into a separate file as the crash dump is being saved. The -M option causes the console messages to be extracted exclusively without saving the crash dump. 

The name_list contains the symbol table information needed to extract the putbuf from the crash dump image. The default name_list is the file /unix. If the crash dump is from another machine or the kernel has rebuilt since the crash dump was taken then the corresponding boot file must be specified as the name_list in order for the extraction of console messages to be successful. 

For crash dumps that do not have crash headers and are not compressed, (i.e. the memory image of a bug dump), the -d option can be used to extract the console messages. Message extraction is the only supported functionality for this type of crash image. 

EXAMPLES

This example loads the cartridge tape produced via a crash dump on a machine equipped with 8 MB of memory. 

$ldsysdump -f /dev/rmt/ctape1 /var/tmp/cdump
Insert media segment 0.
Enter ’c’ to continue, ’q’ to quit: c
Attempting to read sysdump of Wed Apr  4 11:58:37 1990
Sysdump image is 8388608 bytes starting at physical memory location 0x0
................................................................
......................................
1 Sysdump files coalesced, 8389632 bytes transferred
$

FILES

/dev/rmt/ctape1device used for cartridge tape

SEE ALSO

crash(1M), crashconf(1M), sh(1), ls(1), du(1). 

DIAGNOSTICS

If a cartridge tape is inserted out of sequence a message is printed.  The user is allowed to insert a new one and continue the session. 

NOTES

Since the Motorola Delta computer can be equipped with an amount much greater than 16 MB of memory, the destination_file can become quite large.  Use of compressed crash dumps can help contain destination_file size.  In any case, however, the filesystem must have enough free space to hold the destination_file and the ulimit of the ldsysdump program must be high enough to write the entire dump image.