Finding the cause of a crash?

[Alex Georgiev_1]

I have a D380 that crashed. It ended up at the (in bcheckrc)# prompt. File system checked OK and no files seem to have been damaged. Question is: How do I find the cause of the crash? Nothing in the syslog whatsoever... which suggests that this wasn't a hardware problem. There was a tombstone generated, but that's something that HP will analyze for me... Meanwhile, while I'm waiting for the result, where can I look, other then the syslog? Any ideas?

[melvyn burnard · Accepted solution]

what does the /etc/shutdownlog tell you?
is htere a crash dump in /var/adm/crash.
Just because there was nothing in the syslog does not mean this was not a hardware problem, It is posible it could be a hardware problem, but could also be a software crash.

[Elmar P. Kolkman]

/var/adm/crash/crash.#/INDEX can tell the panic-message at the moment of the crash if it is caused by a panic and /var/adm/crash is large enough.

[twang]

Add to above, you may take a look at /var/tombstones to find out whether the crash caused by hardware.

[Elena Leontieva]

Alex,

Take a look at this document.

http://www2.itrc.hp.com/service/iv/docDisplay.do?docId=/DE_SW_UX_swrec_EN_01_E/Dump.pdf

Elena.

[Alex Georgiev_1]

Thanks for the replies!

It turned out that it was a bad memory DIMM. Of course, I should have known about /var/adm/crash. Shame on me! I did know about /var/tombstones... but don't know how to interpret the tombstones files.

Is there any info out there on how to read tombstones? Or a utility to interpret them? I know that HP would prefer to have only its CEs read and decode those files, but curiosity has taking the best of me...

Elena, that paper was a great resource. Any chance that I can get my hands the other chapters?

[Elena Leontieva]

Alex,

This is the link to this resource:

http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/iv/node.do?node=prod%2FWW_Start%2FN1%7C16&admit=-682735245+1062775692087+28353475

Regards,
Elena.

[Alex Georgiev_1]

The link doesn't work for me. I end up at a "Knowledge Tree" page that says the data wasn't found.

Thanks, anyways!

[Elena Leontieva]

This is a list of topics available. Would you like to get the links to specific chapters? I can post it as I did for chapter 10 that worked for you.

No points, please.

Elena.

All documents on this site require Adobe Acrobat Reader to view.

» Terms of Use
Using the SW Recovery Handbook means that you accept these terms

» Introduction
preface, release history and index

» Chapter 01 - HP-UX Installation
Version: Jul 02

» Chapter 02 - System Boot
Version: May 03 updated!

» Chapter 03 - System Startup
Version: Jul 03 updated!

» Chapter 04 - System Recovery
Version: Jun 03 updated!

» Chapter 05 - Software Distributor (SD-UX)
Version: May 03 updated!

» Chapter 06 - Patches
Version: Jul 03 updated!

» Chapter 07 - Update to HP-UX 11i
Version: Jul 02

» Chapter 08 - Ignite-UX
Version: Jul 03 updated!

» Chapter 09 - Kernel Configuration
Version: Jul 03 updated!

» Chapter 10 - Crash Dumps
Version: Jul 03 updated!

» Chapter 11 - Network Connectivity
Version: Jul 02

» Chapter 12 - Network Services
Version: Jun 02

» Chapter 13 - Software Development
Version: Jul 03 updated!

» Chapter 14 - I/O Addressing
Version: Jul 02

» Chapter 15 - Fibre Channel Mass Storage (FCMS)
Version: Apr 02

» Chapter 16 - Logical Volume Manager (LVM)
Version: Jul 03 updated!

» Chapter 17 - VERITAS Volume Manager (VxVM)
Version: Jul 03 updated!

» Chapter 18 - JFS/OnlineJFS
Version: Jan 02

» Chapter 19 - MC/ServiceGuard
Version: May 03 updated!

» Chapter 20 - Event Monitoring Services (EMS)
Version: Nov 00

» Chapter 21 - Instant Capacity On Demand (iCOD)
Version: Apr 03 updated!

» Chapter 22 - Virtual Partitions (vPars)
Version: Jul 03 updated!

» Chapter 23 - Process Resource Manager (PRM)
Version: Apr 03 updated!

» Chapter 24 - UPS Manager
Version: Jan 03 updated!

» Chapter 25 - Storage Libraries
Version: Jun 02

» Chapter 26 - XP Disk Arrays
Version: Jul 03 updated!

» Chapter 27 - EVA Disk Arrays
Version: Jul 03 new!

» Chapter 28 - CIFS/9000
Version: Jul 03 new!

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[Alex Georgiev_1]

I was able to guess the file names for each chapter... except for four of them. I'm still missing chapters 13, 24, 26, and 27. If you can post links to those four, that would be great. This provides some great study material. I honestly feel blessed that someone showed it to me.