topic Re: System Crash in Operating System - OpenVMS

System Crash

vmsserbo — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 08:38:52 GMT

One of our VAX 7000-640 crashed and rebooted itself.

I did a crash dump and got the following message?

SSRVEXCEPT, Unexpected system service exception

Any ideas what may have caused the crash?

Thanks!

Re: System Crash

Richard Whalen — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 08:42:51 GMT

Could be anything. What system image was the PC in?

Re: System Crash

vmsserbo — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 08:44:00 GMT

It isn't a PC? Image?

Re: System Crash

labadie_1 — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 09:07:05 GMT

In this context, PC means program counter I think :-)

Post the output of the following

$ ana/crash sys$system:sysdump.dmp
sda> clue crash

Re: System Crash

Jeff Chisholm — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 01:18:27 GMT

A SSRVEXCEPT happens in the context of the process that was currently executing. You've changed mode to kernel and raised IPL above 2 in order to perform some task. Any kind of accvio or other problem will be fatal. Give us the output from

$ ana/crash sys$system
SDA> show crash
SDA> show stack

and we'll decode it for you. It's a VAX so that clue command won't quite work that way.

Re: System Crash

John Abbott_2 — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 04:02:10 GMT

Check you haven't enabled non-fatal bugchecking

$ mc sysgen
show bugcheck

If it's set to 1, then you might want to consider changing this to 0 to prevent another exec mode crash.

Regards
John.

Re: System Crash

John Abbott_2 — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 06:01:28 GMT

... I guess it's also worth pointing out that if you have enabled non-fatal bugchecks and you now turn them off (to avoid another system crash), then you should be aware that another non-f SSRVEXCEPT will result in the PID being killed off.

Perhaps better for you now that you have a crash dump file but post the crash information so it can be examined to help determine the level of impact.

To view subsequent non-f bugs analyze the error log file.

Regards
John.

Re: System Crash

John Travell — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 06:04:17 GMT

Miles
Is this machine running V7.3?. You posted a question about a month ago for a different crash on another V7.3 system.

If so, do:
$ CLUE:==$CLUE
$ CLUE/DISPLAY
Then
$ CLUE/DISPLAY 'n' (where 'n' is the index of the latest crash)

You may also have a file
CLUE$OUTPUT:CLUE$LAST_'nodename'.LIS
If so, please attach it here.

To rephrase what Jeff said, your machine suffered an unrecoverable exception, probably an access violation, while the current process was executing some system service code.
Since there are hundreds of system services, and a wide variety of possible exception types, we need to see the details as stated above before even the most tentative conclusion can be drawn.

While you are at it, you have assigned points to only 224 of the 404 responses to your questions. Can you try to catch up with some of those you have missed?

Re: System Crash

Volker Halle — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 07:34:46 GMT

Miles,

you know how to provide crash information from an OpenVMS VAX system crash, don't you ? If you don't remember, look at:

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1080098

Please provide this CLUE information immediately for each crash problem to limit speculation and unnecessary questions...

Volker.