Crashes and the files it leaves behind

[Greg Huber_3]

Background: HP-UX 10.20, multiple hardware platforms, development and delivery
environments.
We develop a product which is tested in many sites, with strict control over
the user access. Our product is the only product on the target machines. No one
is given root privileges at the test sites. They log on as a specific user for
all testing.
We are experiencing system crashes on occasion, and are well aware of that
fact.

Our problem lies in the fact that the files left behind in "/var/adm/crashes"
are building up to the point of making the system itself unoperable(var disk
space > 100%). Due to the fact that root owns these files and no testers have
root privileges to delete them, and we really don't want the testers to have to
worry about disk space, we could care less about these files. Is there a way to
just redirect them to the bit bucket?

[Evan Day_1]

Edit the file /etc/rc.config.d/savecore and change the line

SAVECORE=1

to

SAVECORE=0

This should keep the system from saving the crash dumps at bootup.

[Chris Anoruo_1]

Hi Greg,

It is safer to read the crash files to find and understand the root cause of
those crashes so as to address them. You can do "strings
/var/adm/crash/filename|pg" or send it to HP for diagnostics.
Once the poblem is resolved, you can then delete the old crash files and free
up your system disk.

I hope this will help.

[Ben Boutalib]

First you need to find what is the cause of the core dump by running the
utility q4 and send the output to HP to be analysed.
Or you can check this file for any HPMC occurence , if found means that you
have a hardware problem.

/var/adm/crash/core.0/INDEX
^ suffix increments on successive dumps

The dump will save to the directory indicated by this line in
/etc/rc.config.d/savecore (10.X):
SAVECORE_DIR=/var/adm/crash (default destination)
or /etc/rc.config.d/savecrash (11.00)
SAVECRASH_DIR=/var/adm/crash

NOTE: If you wish to direct future dumps to a file system with more
space, create a new directory for them, and update the SAVECORE_DIR variable.